#and i write this as a jew on the left ... who is part of a long tradition of jews on the left

[fdelopera]

I've been thinking about one of the antisemitic canards that some of you goyim like to shout at us Jews. It goes something like this: "LOL looks like the Jews are becoming like the the Nazis, haha."

And I've been thinking about why you goyim are so incredibly grotesque when you say this about us Jews.

Is it because you are knowingly weaponizing the Holocaust, our greatest tragedy, against us? Yes, that's part of it.

Is it because you are being intellectually deceitful bigots? Yes, that's part of it.

Is it because your bigotry and antisemitism are delegitimizing the Palestinian cause, and making it harder for the Palestinian people to fight for their freedom? Yes, that's a BIG part of it.

But I think the most disturbing part of this lie is where you goys got it from.

Especially you leftist goys.

You got this lie from the Neo-Nazi, Richard Spencer.

You know, the Nazi who famously got punched in the face.

You also got this lie from the Neo-Nazi, David Duke.

Richard Spencer was one of the first white supremacists who popularized weaponizing the Holocaust and Nazism against Jewish people in this way (all while being a whole-ass Nazi himself). He uses logical fallacies and political theatre to advance alt-right ideas.

But then you goyim on the political left got ahold of Richard Spencer's talking points. You copied the homework of an actual Nazi, and ran with his ideas, and here we are.

You leftist goys have been secretly listening in on Nazis for fucks sake!! Despite knowing full well that they HATE people of color. Despite knowing full well that they HATE queer people. Despite knowing full well that they HATE Muslims. Nazis want everyone who isn't a white, cishet, right-wing Christian to fucking DIE, for fucks sake.

Richard Spencer and David Duke stand for EVERYTHING YOU HATE!

Except, apparently, for hating Jews.

You leftist goys have been going to YouTube and listening to Nazi lectures. You've been plugging your ears when Nazis say HIDEOUS things about every other marginalized group, but then when they start talking about Jews, you copy their white supremacist talking points VERBATIM.

How DARE you steal your ideas from Nazis. You are DISGUSTING.

There are so many VALID and LEGITIMATE ways you can protest against the Israeli government and their atrocities and war crimes. There are so many VALID and LEGITIMATE ways you can protest the actions of the Israeli military.

But when you steal your ideas from Nazis, you make it clear that you don't give a SHIT about the Palestinian people.

When you steal your ideas from Nazis, you make it clear that the ONLY thing you care about is seeing Jews get murdered.

YOU HAVE BECOME USEFUL IDIOTS FOR THE NEO-NAZIS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS.

Great job, goys.

God. You make me so, so tired.

[fdelopera]

looking at so many of you American leftist goyim right now. i think i'm gonna start blaming you for Trump. if you were an adult in 2016, you at least had the opportunity to vote against him! or hell, even if you were a minor back then, i'm still gonna blame you for him!

i think i'm also gonna blame you for the Evangelical Christians in the US. and the right-wing extremists. and Fox News.

but of course, i won't.

because that would be ridiculous!

a people are not a government!

see how stupid you sound, when you harass random Jews online about the Israeli government?

oh. but in all seriousness, i will blame some of you for popularizing Richard Spencer's Neo-Nazi ideas. you certainly like to quote him a lot!

many such cases

[mylight-png]

I refuse to be told to "move on" from October 7th. I simply refuse.

You know the thing about trauma? You don't really get the choice to move on. You may be living in the future, but at least a part of your mind is trapped in that horrible moment. Sometimes that part of you can never escape.

Right now, as I'm writing this, I am sitting at my desk in my room. But right now, as I am writing this a part, huge part, of me is still in that airport. That part of me is still staring at my phone, trying to catch its breath but failing. That part of me is still watching in shock as the death count rises, the videos of Hamas's atrocities are broadcasted everywhere I see, the celebration of my people being massacred is burning my eyes. My ears are hearing the wailing sirens from when I was last in Israel. My hands are still feeling the shaking of the walls as the Iron Dome intercepts attempts upon the lives of my family and me. My heart is hurting for each life lost and each family left broken.

My body is here, in January 10th. My mind is not. My mind, and the mind of nearly every Jew is still stuck in October 7th.

Do not think we chose this. If I could choose indifference, if I could choose apathy, if I could choose ignorance, I wouldn't feel so constantly triggered and in pain.

But nobody gets to choose trauma.

This wasn't a unique trauma, a first-time event. Pogroms are nothing new to us, genocides and attempts at such against us aren't anything new, hateful libel and lies are near-constants.

That's part of what made October 7th so much worse.

I grew up hearing about how my great-grandfather lost his entire family to the Holocaust, how my ancestors survived pogroms, how my parents faced systemic antisemitism in the USSR.

We all grew up hearing our parents and grandparents tell us about antisemitism.

And do not think we were ignorant of it. I was well aware that the world is not even close to shedding its deeply ingrained antisemitism.

I was aware of it when I wrote a speech about discussion of modern antisemitism and being told it was "well-written but controversial". I was aware of it when my teacher said I was responding "emotionally, not academically" to an author claiming antisemitism and the Holocaust weren't "that bad".

I was aware of it when a synagogue near me got shot up, a synagogue I've been to. I was aware of it because I had no other choice.

But it had always felt like it was "winding down" from what my parents had told me. Yes what my teacher did was bad but at least he didn't explicitly single me out for being a Jew and intentionally fail me. Yes the feedback for my speech was hurtful but it wasn't like I was being violently censored. Yes the shooting was awful but it wasn't a full-blown pogrom.

I'm not saying my logic was correct. Far from it. But that's how it felt before October 7th.

When October 7th happened I saw that nothing was "winding down" as I had previously thought. People were still just as keen to gleefully cheer on the killing of Jews as they had been. The world is just as slow to act when Jews are being forcibly held and tortured and killed. Blood libel and ideas of the "doctor's plot" are alive and well.

Oct 7th triggered old trauma, Oct 7th was traumatic in its own right, and for most of us, Oct 7th proved that antisemitism isn't going anywhere. It isn't winding down or getting better.

And that kind of pain? That kind of trauma? That sticks with you.

You wouldn't tell any other person to get over their trauma. So what makes it ok to say it to traumatized Jews as we are still processing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?

That behavior is horrible and inexcusable.

Trauma is trauma, you don't get to decide who does or doesn't have the right to be traumatized. You don't get to decide how people discuss their trauma.

[etz-ashashiyot]

Quotes from "Executed Jews" I want to especially highlight:

Two distinct patterns of antisemitism can be identified by the Jewish holidays that celebrate triumphs over them: Purim and Hanukkah. In the Purim version of antisemitism, exemplified by the Persian genocidal decrees in the biblical Book of Esther, the goal is openly stated and unambiguous: Kill all the Jews. In the Hanukkah version of antisemitism, whose appearances range from the Spanish Inquisition to the Soviet regime, the goal is still to eliminate Jewish civilization. But in the Hanukkah version, this goal could theoretically be accomplished simply by destroying Jewish civilization, while leaving the warm, de-Jewed bodies of its former practitioners intact.

For this reason, the Hanukkah version of antisemitism often employs Jews as its agents. It requires not dead Jews but cool Jews: those willing to give up whatever specific aspect of Jewish civilization is currently uncool. Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet's only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism's brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening — and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah antisemitism's success. These "converted" Jews are used to demonstrate the good intentions of the regime — which of course isn't antisemitic but merely requires that its Jews publicly flush thousands of years of Jewish civilization down the toilet in exchange for the worthy prize of not being treated like dirt, or not being murdered. For a few years. Maybe.

I wish I could tell the story of Ala's father concisely, compellingly, the way everyone prefers to hear about dead Jews. I regret to say that Benjamin Zuskin wasn't minding his own business and then randomly stuffed into a gas chamber, that his thirteen-year-old daughter did not sit in a closet writing an uplifting diary about the inherent goodness of humanity, that he did not leave behind sad-but-beautiful aphorisms pondering the absence of God while conveniently letting his fellow humans off the hook. He didn't even get crucified for his beliefs. Instead, he and his fellow Soviet Jewish artists — extraordinarily intelligent, creative, talented, and empathetic adults — were played for fools, falling into a slow-motion psychological horror story brimming with suspense and twisted self-blame. They were lured into a long game of appeasing and accommodating, giving up one inch after another of who they were in order to win that grand prize of being allowed to live.

Spoiler alert: they lost.

[...]

But Soviet support for Jewish culture was part of a larger plan to brainwash and coerce national minorities into submitting to the Soviet regime — and for Jews, it came at a very specific price. From the beginning, the regime eliminated anything that celebrated Jewish "nationality" that didn't suit its needs. Jews were awesome, provided they weren't practicing Jewish religion, studying traditional Jewish texts, using Hebrew, or supporting Zionism. The Soviet Union thus pioneered a versatile gaslighting slogan, which it later spread through its client states in the developing world and which remains popular today: it was not antisemitic, merely anti-Zionist. (In the process of not being antisemitic and merely being anti-Zionist, the regime managed to persecute, imprison, torture, and murder thousands of Jews.) What's left of Jewish culture once you surgically remove religious practice, traditional texts, Hebrew, and Zionism? In the Soviet Empire, one answer was Yiddish, but Yiddish was also suspect for its supposedly backwards elements. Nearly 15 percent of its words came directly from biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, so Soviet Yiddish schools and publishers, under the guise of "simplifying" spelling, implemented a new and quite literally antisemitic spelling system that eliminated those words' Near Eastern roots. Another answer was "folklore" — music, visual art, theater, and other creative work reflecting Jewish life — but of course most of that cultural material was also deeply rooted in biblical and rabbinic sources, or reflected common religious practices like Jewish holidays and customs, so that was treacherous too.

No, what the regime required were Yiddish stories that showed how horrible traditional Jewish practice was, stories in which happy, enlightened Yiddish-speaking heroes rejected both religion and Zionism (which, aside from its modern political form, is also a fundamental feature of ancient Jewish texts and prayers traditionally recited at least three times daily). This de-Jewing process is clear from the repertoire of the government-sponsored Moscow State Yiddish Theater, which could only present or adapt Yiddish plays that denounced traditional Judaism as backward, bourgeois, corrupt, or even more explicitly — as in the many productions involving ghosts or graveyard scenes — as dead. As its actors would be, soon enough.

The Soviet Union's destruction of Jewish culture commenced, in a calculated move, with Jews positioned as the destroyers. It began with the Yevsektsiya, committees of Jewish Bolsheviks whose paid government jobs from 1918 through 1930 were to persecute, imprison, and occasionally murder Jews who participated in religious or Zionist institutions — categories that included everything from synagogues to sports clubs, all of which were shut down and their leaders either exiled or "purged." This went on, of course, until the regime purged the Yevsektsiya members themselves.

The pattern repeated in the 1940s. As sordid as the Yeveksiya chapter was, I found myself more intrigued by the undoing of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, a board of prominent Soviet Jewish artists and intellectuals established by Joseph Stalin in 1942 to drum up financial support from Jews overseas for the Soviet war effort. Two of the more prominent names on the JAC's roster of talent were Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, and Ala's father Benjamin Zuskin, the theater's leading actor. After promoting these people during the war, Stalin decided these loyal Soviet Jews were no longer useful, and charged them all with treason. He had decided that this committee he himself created was in fact a secret Zionist cabal, designed to bring down the Soviet state. Mikhoels was murdered first, in a 1948 hit staged to look like a traffic accident. Nearly all the others — Zuskin and twelve more Jewish luminaries, including the novelist Dovid Bergelson, who had proclaimed Moscow as the center of the Yiddish future — were executed by firing squad on August 1952.

Just as the regime accused these Jewish artists and intellectuals of being too "nationalist" (read: Jewish), today's long hindsight makes it strangely tempting to read this history and accuse them of not being "nationalist" enough — that is, of being so foolishly committed to the Soviet regime that they were unable to see the writing on the wall. Many works on this subject have said as much. In Stalin's Secret Pogrom, the indispensable English translation of transcripts from the JAC "trial," Russia scholar Joshua Rubenstein concludes his lengthy introduction with the following:

As for the defendants at the trial, it is not clear what they believed about the system they each served. Their lives darkly embodied the tragedy of Soviet Jewry. A combination of revolutionary commitment and naive idealism had tied them to a system they could not renounce. Whatever doubts or misgivings they had, they kept to themselves, and served the Kremlin with the required enthusiasm. They were not dissidents. They were Jewish martyrs. They were also Soviet patriots. Stalin repaid their loyalty by destroying them.

This is completely true, and also completely unfair. The tragedy — even the term seems unjust, with its implied blaming of the victim — was not that these Soviet Jews sold their souls to the devil, though many clearly did. The tragedy was that integrity was never an option in the first place.

[...]

In Jerusalem that morning, Ala told me, in a sudden private moment of anger and candor, that the Soviet Union's treatment of the Jews was worse than Nazi Germany's. I tried to argue, but she shut me up. Obviously the Nazi atrocities against Jews were incomparable, a fact Ala later acknowledged in a calmer mood. But over four generations, the Soviet regime forced Jews to participate in and internalize their own humiliation - and in that way, Ala suggested, they destroyed far more souls. And they never, ever, paid for it.

"They never had a Nuremberg," Ala told me that day, with a quiet fury. "They never acknowledged the evil of what they did. The Nazis were open about what they were doing, but the Soviets pretended. They lured the Jews in, they baited them with support and recognition, they used them, they tricked them, and then they killed them. It was a trap. And no one knows about it, even now. People know about the Holocaust, but not this. Even here in Israel, people don't know. How did you know?"

— Excerpted from "Executed Jews," Chapter 4 of People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn

(All emphasis mine)

Read the full chapter here.

[italian-lit-tournament]

Italian literature tournament - Second round.

Propaganda in support of the authors is accepted, you can write it both in the tag if reblog the poll (explaining maybe that is propaganda and you want to see posted) or in the comments. Every few days it will be recollected and posted here under the cut.

Propaganda in favour of Primo Levi by @itsmalombra

What to say about Primo Levi? Jew, a leftist until his death, Holocaust survivor (thanks to beng a chemist, he was considered useful by the SS and wasn't killed as soon he arrived to Auschwitz), he condemned with decades of advance the first cases of violence from the just started Israel occupation aganst the Palestinians, having still care for the difficulties that many jews like him were experiencing in Europe. He is one of the author you have to read if you want to understand the contrast and the difference between anti-semitism and anti-sionism. The horrors he endured were the cause of hid death in 1987, possibly by suicide.

About his relationship with other italian jews who moved in Occupied Palestine/Israel but at the same time his distrust to Menachem Begin policies and latent antisionism: Levi was clearly inspired by them, but not enough to follow their example and join his fate in the postwar period to the Zionist project in Israel. He had a complicated relationship to the country. [���] Like other Jews, Levi kept up with news from the region, especially during times of crisis. His responses to two of these crises reveal a strong attachment to Israel on a personal level but also some sharp differences with the country’s policies. His criticisms were political and generally lined up with the views of the Italian Left. They came to a head in 1982, during Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in Operation ‘Peace for Galilee’. […] Much of public opinion in Western countries, including Italy, turned against Israel, especially following the Christian Phalange militia’s massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila in September, 1982. Levi joined his voice to the protests, signing letters urging Israel’s withdrawal and calling for Begin’s retirement from office. In turn, he himself came under criticism from prominent leaders of the Italian Jewish community, who called for communal solidarity at such a time. Fearing an intensification of hostility against Jews in Italy as a result of vehement anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations breaking out across Europe, they also thought it unwise for Jews to join their voices in protest against Israel, as Levi and others were doing. Levi’s Italian Jewish friends living in Israel, some of whom lost family members in the country’s War of Independence and subsequent fighting, also spoke out against him. ‘I retain a close sentimental tie with Israel,’ he confessed at the time, ‘but not with this Israel’. [source]

Another article about this important part of him is here, unfortunately is in italian.

I don’t think there is another author as representative of the Holocaust horror (and war horror in general) in Italy like Primo Levi, considering also is eminence in contemporary literature, his interviews with Philip Roth or Judith Butler, him being the namesake of various international associations against discriminations and violence like the Primo Levi Center, the raw and vivid power of his writing and poetry:

You who live safe In your warm house; You who find, come evening, Hot food and the faces of friends: Consider if this is a man Who struggles in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for crumbs Who dies because of a No or Yes Consider if this is a woman, Nameless and hairless Without strength to remember Vacant eyes and a womb Cold like a frog in the winter: Consider the fact that this has happened: These words I suggest: Etch them on your heart When staying home and going out, Closing your eyes and rising back; Repeat them to your children: Or may your house crumble, Illness bind you And they turn their faces away from you.

If This Is a Man, Primo Levi, 1947.

To describe his importance not only in the italian, but also european and world-wide canon, it takes months and pages of space, a thing that sadly now I don't have, but if you, readed, have never heard of him, you have in front of you so much of books, essays, poetry and writing by Levi that will let you amazed by his depth of though and sensivity, but most importantly, vote now for him👆.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Propaganda in favor of Guido Cavalcanti by @eresia-catara

May I add further propaganda for Guido: He's a noble, he disdains aristocrats, he was Florence's number one Server of Cunt, he was the city's faggot, he was heretical, he went on a random pilgrimage but interrupted it and managed to be buried in a church anyway, he had an archenemy who sent some men to murder him on said pilgrimage, he came back and tried to murder him back in plain daylight, he gave zero fucks about politics, he got exiled because he was considered a menace for the city. He SAW DANTE's poetical talent, encouraged it, shaped it, and through him the whole of italian literature. Think about it. Also they became besties until they evolved to a tormented psychosexual haunting dynamic (see break-up poem) where Dante himself actually exiled him. In the 13th century his poetry anticipates so many of the literary themes of the XXth century, going from fragmentation of the self (his is basically vivisection and dispersion of his parts), to dissociation from one's own mind and body, lack of identity, irony, desecration, his poetry is full of schizophrenic-like hallucinations, reading them is truly a trip, and yet his language is profoundly meoldic and sweet. And there's also gender-fuckery. and theater, of course, because his poems develop like a scene from a theater (adding layers to the dissociation). So really he has it all guys.

Guido Cavalcanti propaganda by @girldante

GUIDO CAVALCANTI PROPAGANDA ABBIAMO:

LA DISSOCIAZIONE SCHIZOFRENICA:

IL COMICO, IL SIMPATICO BURLONE, IL MEMATORE ANTE LITTERAM:

IL MACABRO, IL GORE, I SINTOMI™

IL BREAKUP TOSSICO PASSIVO AGGRESSIVO CON DANTE

in conclusione

[fdelopera]

Also the "Ethnostate Canard" is taken DIRECTLY from Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. You know, the Nazi who famously got punched in the face.

You idiot goys on the left have been listening to Richard Fucking Spencer, and you've been stealing your ideas from a Nazi.

Some of you leftists are so incredibly dishonest. And also just fucking stupid.

This past Saturday, an antisemitic mob hundreds strong in Russia rioted and shut down an airport. They were trying to find, catch, and murder Jews entering the country. That same day, a Jewish community centre in a different part of Russia was burned down, and "Death to Jews" was painted on the rubble. [1] [14]

On October 9th, protestors in Sydney, Australia chanted "Gas the Jews." [2]

There has been a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents in the UK, including kosher grocery stores being broken into and vandalized, and cars shouting "Kill Jews" at London Synagogues. [3]

Over the past month in Germany: Holocaust memorials have been defaced. The phrase "Jewish pigs" was spray-painted on a Green Party office after a party member spoke out about antisemitism. A teenager at a rally shouted "I want Adolf Hitler back. I’m for Hitler, for gassing the Jews." Molotov cocktails were thrown into synagogues. [3] [4]

On October 21st, Italians shouted, "Open the borders so we can kill the Jews." [5]

In Canada, a Jewish Community Center was egged by a man shouting antisemitic slurs, a Jewish business was, and a local Rabbi had a swastika drawn on his window. [11] [12]

Over the past month, synagogues have been defaced or raided in Austria, Colombia, Chile, France, Portugal and Spain. A historic synagogue was burned down in Tunisia. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [13]

All that happened this month, this year. I'm not even touching on the past twenty years of global antisemitism. I'm not even mentioning the United States.

Who told you the proponents of antisemitism and the enemies of Jews were dead? Who told you that our culture and religion were respected in the diaspora? Who told you we could be safely Jewish in "our own countries"? Who lied to you?

[hero-israel]

I think there needs to be a reckoning about how so many white (passing) American secular/nonpracticing antiZionist Jews can say "Not in my name, Israel doesn't speak for us!" and then think they can speak for Israel. How so many of them can have a limited familial connection to Israel, have such a disdain for Israelis, Israeli culture and society, and Israel as a concept, and then have the gall to act like their opinions matter?

I see their attitudes be described as fear, but to me it strikes me as more than just fear. A lot of them, I suspect, have incorporated antiZionism as a fundamental part of their Jewish identity. It's not just a disagreement, they're not just saving face. Take away the Goyim and talk to them privately and they still believe what they believe, and express it in the same way. They hate Israeli Jews.

And Israel is only going to become less Ashkenazi (aka less "white") as time marches forward. The bad faith hysterical Israel bashing and condescension is only going to look more and more like Orientalism, and frankly, racism.

I think it's very possible that calling something antisemitic can't just be a catchall term when this chicken comes home to roost. I think if there aren't already, there will be distinct forms of antisemitism, some that only Diaspora Jews face and some that only Israeli Jews face. And if this is true or will end up being true, it's pretty important that we not speak over each other's experiences. To do that we have to recognize these experiences and respect them. Do some Israeli Jews disrespect the Diaspora experience? Yes, from what I've seen. Is it nearly as vitriolic and is it growing nearly as quickly as the disrespect for the Israeli experience among antiZionist American Jews? Not even close.

All this divisive language to say: sometimes when Israelis say "so and so is antisemitic!" in the context of antiZionism, they're talking about themselves, their experiences, the stakes for them, and not Americans. So maybe we should all learn to stay in our lanes sometimes.

A lot of Israeli Jews disrespect, or at least are unable to grasp, diaspora existence, particularly when it comes to Americans. I can't even count the number of times I read Israelis say "Why are you American Jews so upset about Trump? Don't you see how good he's been for Israel?" Which is the worst damn argument a person could possibly use - it feeds into both left-wing and right-wing antisemitism, while ignoring that American Jews live HERE and are at risk from Trump's fascist cult and general lawlessness. And it is bad FOR EVERYBODY to have "pro-Israel" become the position of stroke-babbling grotesque racist criminals, and also for America to be too focused on anarchic decomposition and Yugoslav-style street warfare to be able to support Israel like it traditionally has.

And because turds of a feather flush together, Netanyahu wants ALAN DERSHOWITZ to be Israel's advocate if the ICJ case proceeds. I knew Netanyahu was a senile failure undermining all the strengths he had ever built for the country and this is just the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae. Alan Dershowitz is the ultimate stereotype of a Boomer who was kind of useful in the 1980s-90s and became awful and embarrassing now, Trump is surrounded by them (i.e. Rudy Giuliani). Your grandma in Florida remembers Alan Dershowitz for writing "Chutzpah" and being tough and quick-witted, and everybody under 40 knows Dershowitz as a Trump cultist and Epstein fuckbuddy. Big "Vladek Spiegelman can only compare his artist son to Walt Disney" energy. There are surely thousands of lawyers better-suited for the role, just off the top of my head I'd prefer Eugene Kontorovich and so should anyone who is more aware of the world as it actually is than how it was in 1994.

I say all that to parallel your original point, not to contradict it. Yes, the American Jews who performatively loathe Israel are by and large just an Extremely Online phenomenon of the most college-town bubble-protected, least observant, least affiliated, and least aware of non-Ashkenazim. It is not so hard for American Ashkenazim to stay protected from antisemitism as long as they totally unplug from their Jewish identity and any public-facing aspects of it. Can't be killed in a synagogue or JCC or kosher store if you never go in, head tap.

[mariacallous]

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid drew gasps this month when he told the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, “We are much closer to Israeli settlements being built in Gaza than hostages coming home from Gaza.” This is hardly news to anyone paying attention to Israeli governmental policy, but it introduced an unwanted chill into a conference that aimed to focus on “Jewish unity” and unspecified “support for Israel.”

Like other American Jews with strong connections to Israel, and dozens of friends and family members there, I have spent many a sleepless night worrying about the fate of the country, and furiously WhatsApping loved ones there to check on their safety. We may want to believe that Israeli leaders are trying to do what is best for their country and its residents. When we see news of yet another teenage soldier killed in Gaza or Lebanon, we want to believe that their sacrifice is not in vain but is making Israel safer.

But this is not a moment for surprise or for more rousing shows of vague “support for Israel.” It is a moment for anyone who cares about the future of the country and the people who live there to sound the alarm and wake each other up.

The settler movement has achieved a full takeover of the Israeli government, and they make no secret of their intentions: to resettle Gaza and officially annex the West Bank. Israeli leadership views the election of Donald Trump as clearing the path for this goal. Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich said as much explicitly earlier this month. This past Sukkot, Likud members of Knesset took part in a conference on resettling Gaza held in a closed military zone meters from the strip, with the IDF protecting participants while pushing back hostage families who had come to protest.

High level Israeli officials have testified that Netanyahu has entirely abandoned the hostages and torpedoed any attempt to free them. Instead, he is continuing the war to advance his political survival and to allow for the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza. One of his high level aides has been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a German newspaper, allegedly at the  prime minister’s behest, in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal. Even former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fired apparently for supporting such a deal, has said publicly that there is no reason for the war to continue and that Israel is on its way to military occupation of Gaza.

There is increasing evidence that the army is implementing the “Generals’ Plan,” which aims to displace all 300,000-400,000 residents of Northern Gaza by preventing any humanitarian assistance from entering, bombarding the territory, preventing residents from returning and re-establishing an Israeli military occupation, followed inevitably by resettlement.

Meanwhile, Gaza itself has become a humanitarian disaster. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed — yes, including militants and terrorists, but also including thousands of children and entire families. The U.N. estimates that women and children make up 70% of those killed. Large-scale hunger and disease will likely only grow worse if and when Israel implements its recently passed laws that would prevent UNRWA,  the main U.N. agency serving Palestinians, from operating there. In the West Bank, settlers carry out near daily violence against Palestinian villagers and farmers, with near complete impunity, often with the protection or assistance of the army.

The news that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (along with Hamas’s Mohammed Deif, who is likely dead) engendered the expected cheers from the global left and defensive outrage from the Jewish and Israeli establishment. But for anyone who cares about Israel’s future, these arrest warrants should be cause for deep sadness and alarm. It is a tragic moment when the prime minister of the Jewish state has sunk so low — and brought the country so low — that he can credibly be accused of war crimes, while simultaneously torpedoing any internal inquiry that could have staved off the ICC warrants.

In early 2023, it seemed like the electoral ascendency of Israeli extremist parties, combined with the mass anti-government protests that rocked Israel, might shock mainstream American Jewry out of their usual uncritical support. A September 2023 protest against Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations drew thousands of Israeli expats and American Jews, including prominent rabbis and communal leaders. Even some legacy Jewish organizations, not accustomed to criticizing Israel, registered their disapproval of the attempted judicial overhaul.

The horrific massacres of Oct. 7 moved many American Jews back into the more familiar narrative of “Israel under attack.” The shocking willingness of some pro-Palestine activists to justify or deny Hamas’s atrocities and to dehumanize Israelis, coupled with a rise in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, channeled communal energy into fighting antisemitism. And the real threat from Iran, including direct missile attacks as well as more than a year of rocket fire from Hezbollah before this week’s truce, has generated existential fear for Israel.

Mourning and fear must not distract us from the reality that the biggest existential threat to Israel, and indeed to Judaism itself, is coming from Israel’s governing coalition. Israel is not an object of worship or vehicle for Jewish identity. It is a real country with an increasingly authoritarian government committed to perpetual war and settlement. This is both a moral travesty and a danger to the state and to Judaism.

More than 50 years ago, the religious Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned, “A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.” Jews wearing kippahs and tzitzit who ransack Palestinian villages, sometimes even violating the basic laws of Shabbat to do so, who recite Shema while burning down a mosque, or who build a sukkah in a Palestinian village or in the middle of Gaza, have replaced worship of God with worship of power and sovereignty. They would happily destroy the actual state of Israel in order to achieve their dangerous vision of Jewish control over the entire biblical land of Israel, no matter the human or political cost.

Three decades ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu famously accused the left of “forgetting what it means to be a Jew.” But it is Netanyahu and his allies who have forgotten the basic foundations of Judaism. These include pidyon shevuyim — redeeming captives — considered one of the most important commandments, and the most basic commitment of a Jewish state, not to abandon its own people.

Some American Jews believe that we have no right to comment on matters of Israeli security, or that any criticism of Israel fuels antisemitism. And yet, too much of the American Jewish community gives a pass to organizations that have supported Netanyahu’s drive toward autocracy and settlements, and even refused the pleas of hostage families to call for a deal that will end the war in Gaza and bring their loved ones home. American Jews must not stand by as Israel descends into authoritarianism and messianism which are doing irreversible, generational damage. Supporting Israel can no longer mean sporting flag pins, attending “unity” rallies, or trying to shut down any speech critical of Israel.

Rather, support for Israel and its people must mean standing with the Israelis desperately working to save their country from fanaticism, never-ending war and the settler agenda. Painful though it certainly is, supporting Israel today requires setting aside our disbelief that Israeli leaders could act with total disregard for the wellbeing of Israelis, let alone Palestinians. It means no longer giving Netanyahu and his ministers the endless benefit of the doubt.

American Jews can begin by sending our charitable dollars to the brave Israeli civil society organizations rather than to groups that explicitly or implicitly promote settlement and anti-democratic legislation. It means putting pressure on both the Netanyahu government and the U.S. administrations — outgoing and incoming — to end the war. We can demand that the U.S. follow its own laws and require Israel to adhere to the same guidelines for military aid that other countries do, including ensuring transparency in how aid is used. This includes enforcing the deadline for increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Such measures are not an abdication of the security of Israelis, but rather a means of pressuring Netanyahu to end the war and bring home the hostages, allowing Israel to move toward internal investigations and new elections. And we can insist that our communal organizations stop burying their heads in the sand and instead push back on the Israeli government’s dangerous agenda.

It’s time for American Jews to take a strong moral stance for human life and human rights. This would be the truest expression of support for Israel and Israelis, as well as Torah and Judaism.

[ancientcharm]

Nero: The end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (Part III)

The big fire of Rome (known in Latin as Incendium Magnum Romae) 18th July of 64 (Roman year 817)

From 'The Annals' by Tacitus:

Nero at this time was at Antium, and did not return to Rome until the fire approached his house, which he had built to connect the palace with the gardens of Maecenas. To relieve the homeless he opened the Campus Martius, the public buildings of Agrippa, and even his own gardens, and raised temporary structures to receive the destitute multitude. Supplies of food were brought up from Ostia and the neighbouring towns. After five days, an end was put to the conflagration at the foot of the Esquiline hill. But before people had laid aside their fears, the flames returned, with no less fury this second time, and especially in the spacious districts of the city. Although there was less loss of life, the temples of the gods, and the porticoes which were devoted to enjoyment, fell in a yet more widespread ruin. Rome, indeed, is divided into fourteen districts, four of which remained uninjured, three were levelled to the ground, while in the other seven were left only a few shattered, half-burnt relics of houses. Some people noticed that the beginning of this conflagration was on the 18th of July, the day on which the Senones (Gallic tribe) attacked Rome. Others have pushed a curious inquiry so far as to reduce the interval between these two conflagrations into equal numbers of years, months, and days.

Tacitus also writes that the favorable things that Nero did were soon nullified, for a rumor spread that he was singing and playing the lyre while Rome burned. Tacitus assures that it was such rumor caused another event in Rome.

'Nero's Torches' (detail) by Henryk Siemiradzk, 1876

" Therefore, to put an end to this rumor, Nero invented culprits and subjected to very refined punishments to those hated by the populace, called Christians.

The origin of this name was the so-called Christus, who had been condemned to torture and crucifixion during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus; And a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the focus of this disease, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre.

At first those who confessed were arrested, then, after their denunciation, a huge crowd was condemned, not so much for the accusation of the fire, but for hatred of the human race.

In addition, the mockery of those who were going to die was added: covered in wild skins, they died torn to pieces by dogs, or were either crucified or condemned to the flames and to serve as torches when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle.

Although they were criminals, deserving of very severe punishments, a feeling of pity arose, since they were murdered not for the common good, but for the ferocity of a single man." Tacitus

'A Christian Dirce' (detail) by Henryk Siemiradzki , 1897

During the reign of Nero, Christian community in Rome was small. They were mainly slaves, freedmen, and converted Jews of humble origins like their leader, the apostle Peter.

Was this really the first persecution of Christianity?

According Tacitus those innocent people were executed for supposedly burning Rome, or rather because Nero wanted to get rid of a rumor that accused him of the fire, not for their religious beliefs.

And after those events Nero dedicated himself to the project of rebuilding the city and there is no record of any other persecution of Christians during the rest of his reign.

The Catholic Church, which keeps a rigorous record of all its martyrs except for the apostles Peter and Paul, does not mention any saint who was “martyred during the reign of Nero,” which I find surprising given what Tacitus wrote.

The fact that the two most prominent Apostles of Christianity were executed in Rome during the reign of Nero is in all likelihood the reason why this emperor is considered the paradigm of the Antichrist and the first enemy of christians in history.

Was it really Nero who accused the Christians?

'Nero at Baiae' by Jan Styka, circa 1900

Tacitus accounts that Nero returned to Rome and helped the people in the disaster, but adding:

"These acts, though popular, produced no effect, since a rumour had gone forth everywhere that, at the very time when the city was in flames, the emperor appeared on a private stage and sang of the destruction of Troy; comparing present misfortunes with the calamities of antiquity"." (The Annals XV)

Is it possible that people in Rome who had seen Nero in action during fire believed this story? Or could it be that such a rumor never existed but was created by the Roman historians many years later?

Tacitus also accounts the Christians were "detested by the populace." So, isn't it more credible to think that someone among the immense populace could have accused the Christians of burning the city? Is it possible that the false accusation reached Nero directly and that this was the true reason for the arrests and executions ?

'The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 AD ' by Hubert Robert, 18th century

Last Part

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Did you ever write a meta about the First Wizarding War?

I am just so curious about it, although we know almost nothing of it. I know in fanfictions, people tend to make the war something very open, very active, with the Order fighting the Death Eaters in the streets but it feels... off to me?

Like, first of all, how would they know when the DE attack? By the time they would learn about the attack, it's most likely the DE would already have left. And overall, when you read about the 2nd Wizarding War, they never attack place like Diallon Alley or Hogsmeade, but rather kidnap people like Ollivander and Fortescue. Which make me wonder how Voldemort was able to ask teens James and Lily to join him (like said in JK's interview).

When you read what Arthur said about this war:

"You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed. The terror it inspired… you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside… Everyone's worst fear… the very worst."

Well, it sounds more like they would attack people at their home, so the DE are more likely to target people when they attack, while they would cause havrock in the Muggle world. Something that made sense since they don't want to destroy the Wizarding World and the wizards.

Although to be fair, it's not like they have much place to attack in the Wizarding world: the only place we know are Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the Ministry.

I just have a hard time imagining how the war would be like, considering the Ministry was not taken by Voldemort. It's like this world is too small for a war of that kind.

Also, it makes me wonder what was really the role of the Order? Like what did they do? What kind of mission would they do? How would they know when to intervene? I know Remus had missions with werewolf during the 2nd war, but we don't know if he had the same during the 1st. Sirius was away busy with a mission during Harry's first birthday, but I wonder what he was doing. Was it a last minute battle?

"No, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the Wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having purebloods in charge. They weren’t alone either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colors, who thought he had the right idea about things… They got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first.”

It's implied people actually thought Voldemort had the right ideas, which makes me wonder if back then, the muggleborns were less accepted. What was the climate that made it happen? Was it that a bit like with jews, which is how Hitler got to powers?

Also the line in bold always interested me because it didn't feel like the Blacks knew about the Horcruxes, so I wonder what else would give them cold feet.

Sorry for the long text, I just never found someone to talk about it. Nobody seems to get me when I try to think too much about how it was like lol

Hello 👋

Honestly, this is really interesting and I have written about the first war as part of my Voldemort analysis here and here and also here and here. And I'm honestly really curious about the timeline of the first war and what exactly the Order and the DE actually did.

I would say you're right about it not being a war. I mean, for a war, you need armies and countries, and there wasn't a single army involved in this war.

The DE are somewhere between a cult and a terrorist organization. In the first war (and in the second one while Voldemort manages them, tbh) their operations are limited to more targeted killings and in general spreading fear and chaos while keeping a not-super-high death tool (in the first war) and avoiding hurting muggles when possible. Like, up until 1979, basically no one died. We have less than 10 unnamed and named characters that might've died before that and the rest died afterwards. Like, almost all deaths happened in the final 3 years of the war.

Then you have the ministry, which doesn't have an army, it has law enforcement. The aurors and DMLE are not an army and don't really function as one. They are trained to catch criminals, not to fight large-scale battles (not that there were any battles in the first war).

The Order, which if we're generous we can call a paramilitary group (but realistically it's a vigilante armed civilian group).

So, it's hardly a war when it's small-scale attacks and skirmishes fought between a cult/terrorist organization, the police, and an armed civilian group. Its timeline and death tool and how it operates as a whole really doesn't fit a war. Well, it's a terror guerilla sort of war, but not your traditional kind of war. The second Voldemort war was more of a real war than the first one, and even that wasn't a traditional war in any sense and I would hardly call it one. But at least it had battles. Like 2.5 of them.

I outlined more of the timeline here with the evidence for it, but in general:

1967ish - Voldemort returns to the UK and has his interview with Dumbledore. At this point, he already has somewhat of a following. Unclear if these were his "friends" from school or their children, but they are likely the older "friends" from school:

“Then if I were to go to the Hog’s Head tonight, I would not find a group of them — Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov — awaiting your return? Devoted friends indeed, to travel this far with you on a snowy night, merely to wish you luck as you attempted to secure a teaching post.”

(HBP)

1970 - the war starts.

“You can’t blame them,” said Dumbledore gently. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.”

(PS)

Since Dumbledore says this on November 1981, it means the DE started operating in late 1970. Arthur tells us Death Eaters outnumbered the Order 20 to 1, but I think the Order only started operating later in the decade.

I believe that in the early 70s, they weren't too violent yet. There were some attacks, some chaos similar to what we see in the World Cup perhaps:

I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn’t resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them,” he finished disgustedly.

(GoF)

Attacks that strawn fear and unrest and stretched the ministry and the DMLE thin with how many obliviations had to be done — but no one died, not yet. At least, no one important. We know all of the Order members that died were only killed after the infamous photo was taken much later, so it seems in these early days of the war, they didn't really kill anyone perhaps a few muggles here and there (but not as many as the fandom sometimes like to think!) but no wizards died, at least not at first.

I assume this period is mostly marked by small-ish riots and growing normalization of anti-muggle and anti-muggleborn propaganda.

This is the point where Voldemort amassed his followers and purebloods like Walburga and Orion Black thought he had the right idea. Even during the time in the books, muggles are seen as beneath wizards, and muggleborns like Hermione are quietly pressured into not talking about their muggle families because no one cares. Muggleborns like Hermione and Ted Tonks clearly leave their muggle families behind and don't look back and that's accepted as the norm in the wizarding world.

Even in the 90s we see Slughorn is surprised Hermione, the muggleborn, is so talented. Bigotry is still very much present and as I calculated here, muggleborns are only around 5% of the population, with the majority being purebloods (or wizard-raised half-bloods). The blood purity agenda was always there, Voldemort didn't even believe in it himself, he just used it because it was an easily accessible platform that was just there. It was an easy way to gain followers and create unrest, so he took it. It was opportunistic.

So, in that way, yes, it is similar to Nazi Germany. Antisemitism was already there and prevalent in the culture for centuries, Hitler made use of the ideology already present and normalized it, and even made it righteous to believe in his horrid and bigoted ideology. He pushed the culture to more extremes, but the ideas and philosophies were already there, he didn't invent antisemitism in Germany. It was opportunistic. It didn't come out of nowhere and it wasn't just recent either. Antisemitism has a long history in Europe which I'm not going to go into in this post.

1975 - the war gets more violent and wizards are actually killed. We know from Pottermore that:

Eugenia Jenkins 1968 - 1975 Jenkins dealt competently with pure-blood riots during Squib Rights marches in the late sixties, but was soon confronted with the first rise of Lord Voldemort. Jenkins was soon ousted from office as inadequate to the challenge.

(From Pottermore)

It's said Jenkins was ousted from office "soon" after the rise of Voldemort, which again, suggests the more violent attacks only started mid-70s, around 1974 and 1975. From the list of deaths in the post I already linked throughout this post I posed the deaths that ousted her from office were Mr. and Mrs. Bones who we don't have a death date for and were likely important enough in the magical community to send the shockwaves of war that would get the minister kicked out of office. After all, you need something big to rock the wizarding community, a few muggle deaths aren't going to cut it.

(Also the mention of pure-blood riots earlier in the 60s show blood purity was nothing new, just something Voldemort took advantage of that was already there)

This is the point where Walburga and Orion probably got the cold feet Sirius mentioned. Because it's not just muggles and muggleborns anymore. Two pureblood wizards were killed — and that scared the shit out of purebloods who were a little smarter. The realization Voldemort would kill them too if he thought it necessary. It's not that they grew to care about muggleborns or blood traitors, it was self-interest. They realized that Voldemort didn't have any limits and that they weren't safe just because their blood was pure. That's at least, my take on it.

1976 - The Order of the Pheonix is founded

The Order of the Phoenix was likely founded around 1976-1977 after Voldemort and the DE got more violent and a few people actually died and it became clear to Dumbledore the ministry couldn't handle it on their own.

I believe the Order was kinda late to the party (considering how late Dumbledore was when dealing with Grindlewald). I think he advised the ministry on what to do and really hoped the ministry and the DMLE could resolve it at first. When it appeared they couldn't, that's when he founded the Order.

Now, you're right, the first war doesn't seem to have had any actual battles, my guess is that is was as I mentioned above — targeted attacks and skirmishes.

During the first war, Voldemort holds a pretty tight leash on his Death Eaters and who they kill. That's why they kill at homes and kill only specific ministry personnel and Order members for the most part. It's very targeted and specific. They aren't rounding up muggleborns as Lupin says these laws were new in the second war:

“People won’t let this happen,” said Ron. “It is happening, Ron,’; said Lupin. “Muggle-borns are being rounded up as we speak.”

(DH)

This is only in the second war. In the first one, there was no muggleborn registry or compulsive attendance at Hogwarts. The first war was all targeted terror attacks. The DE didn't have the ministry the way they did in the second one. Yes, they had quite a few members in the ministry who probably tried to pass various laws, but it wasn't the complete control they had in 1997-1998.

I assume, what the Order did in these years, was try to gain intelligence about where and when these attacks would happen so they could wait for the Death Eaters there. Again, sort of skirmish warfare and not quite open battles. Very few combatants were probably present for each of these fights.

Most of the Order missions would've been along the lines of:

Protecting expected DE targets

Recon missions and gaining intelligence through various means

Blocking DE in the ministry from getting the intel they are after or passing their laws.

Stuff that is more targeted and doesn't require a full-scale army.

1980 - The Prophecy and Potters going into hiding

(Edit: More notes regarding the timing of the photo and corrections to this section here. James and Lily went into hiding in the winter of 1980, but the Order's photo was taken while James and Lily were in hiding in July 1981, meaning all the Order members died in the 4 months between Harry's birthday and the end of the war)

The prophecy was made about two months before Harry was born:

He stepped forward. Not as tall as Ron, he had to crane his neck to read the yellowish label affixed to the shelf right beneath the dusty glass ball. In spidery writing was written a date of some sixteen years previously, and below that: S. P. T. to A. P. W. B. D. Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter

(OotP)

We also know from Harry's birthdate that Lily would've gotten pregnant with him around late October 1979. Due to how the Fidelius Charm works I believe the Potters went into hiding before Harry was born, right after the Prophecy was made, so around May 1980. All this means the photo Moody shows Harry was taken at some point in 1979 or early 1980 before Lily's stomach was showing with the pregnancy, but I'm leaning towards late 1979.

This means that almost all deaths in the war (and all the deaths of the Order) happened after 1979. This was probably caused by two things:

Voldemort escalating for some reason (after 1980 the prophecy might've had a hand in the escalation of violence for various reasons I discussed in the linked posts)

Wormtail started spying mid-1980:

“DON’T LIE!” bellowed Black. “YOU’D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!”

(PoA)

So it's possible Wormtail revealed exactly where and when the Order was waiting for the DE and the DE could get the jump on them with more wizards than the Order thought there would be.

These two combined factors practically wiped out most of the first Order.

But we're still talking about skirmishes, just larger ones with a higher death tool, but still no large-scale battles like the Battle of Hogwarts. Enlisting the giants wasn't really because Voldemort used them in the war, there were no battles to use them in. They were a threat, kinda like nukes. It was something you have so your enemies won't attack you. Werewolves were similar, although they were probably employed in some of the skirmishes.

This time period since 1979 is probably when this quote from Sirius becomes the case:

“Imagine that Voldemort’s powerful now. You don’t know who his supporters are, you don’t know who’s working for him and who isn’t; you know he can control people so that they do terrible things without being able to stop themselves. You’re scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing . . . the Ministry of Magic’s in disarray, they don’t know what to do, they’re trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere . . . panic . . . confusion . . . that’s how it used to be.

(GoF)

More wizards are now being killed/targeted. Most of them probably get tortured/imprisoned rather than killed. Like Neville says about the Carrows:

“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to spill too much pure blood, so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually kill us.”

(DH)

These are terror attacks meant to create compliance. So most are tortured, kidnapped as ransom and assurance of loyalty, or imperious rather than killed. Those that are killed would only be those that really have no hope to turn them onside — like the Order, hence why Voldemort allowed them to be killed.

1980 - The added deaths and skirmishes caused another minister to be kicked out of office:

Harold Minchum 1975 - 1980 Seen as a hard-liner, he placed even more Dementors around Azkaban, but was unable to contain what looked like Voldemort’s unstoppable rise to power.

(From Pottermore)

As I mentioned, in the final years of the war, shit got way worse with more deaths happening in the span of these 3 years than all the 8 years of "war" before combined. So another minister who doesn't know how to crack down on the terror organization is kicked out.

October 1981 - Voldemort goes after the Potters and the war ends.

And we know what happens from here.

These are my thoughts about the timeline of the first war and how it went. We don't know as much about it as I would've liked to know, but this is my impression of how it went down more or less.

[dreamsofbroflovski]

Gunslinger!Kyle Broflovski x Reader - lovin' what your lovin' does to me

Also available on ao3!

Summary: You and your partner, Kyle Broflovski, are both gunslingers, roaming the United States on horseback looking for fights to pick and bounties to collect. But when the promise of a better life becomes clearer on your horizon, can you really go for it, change everything you know and take roots for the first time in your life? You find out in the best way possible.

Warnings: Wild West AU, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Cunnilingus, Vaginal Fingering, Mating Press, Breeding, Impregnation, Mentions of Pregnancy, Period-Typical Sexism

A/N: There it is. My however-many-thousand-words-long tribute to one of my favourite gingers.

Fun fact, I'm actually as childfree as they go. Got a whole list in my brain of reasons why I really shouldn't have kids. However, if a certain ginger jew from Jersey knocked at my door asking me to be the mother of his babies, I'd just ask "how many?" and get right to fucking work on that.

If some parts of it sound weird, I really did write this instead of sleeping because I wanted it up ASAP and it's crazy.

“Look alive, my dear. We’ve arrived.”

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the gentle voice of my partner.

It was nearing the middle of summer and I was really feeling the dog days. The sun showed me no mercy as it tried to set ablaze what little skin I had showing to the world, which was basically just my unprotected arms. I had been on horseback since dawn without even mentioning a break, and hadn’t exactly considered that the weather at 4am, before sunrise, might’ve been slightly different from what I was currently experiencing now that the sun was at its peak in the sky.

I guess the only salvation when it came to my foolishness was that I wasn’t alone in it. As I turned to the man at my side, matching my horse’s slow speed on his own mount, I saw him wipe some sweat off of his face with the green bandana he kept tied to his neck - being tortured by the heat even more than me, inside of his heavy leather coat.

My partner. My lover, Kyle Broflovski. Notorious gun-for-hire, same as I. We had met many years ago, when he and I were both just seventeen - but life had already taken its toll on the both of us, leaving nothing except two jaded young adults with very little to lose. By then we were already gunslingers, I was here and there committing petty thefts while he worked as a watchman for some merchant in the region. I took his side in a saloon fight that turned into a huge shootout - not proud to say a huge part of its escalation was his fault, but well, at least we won - and the thrill of going through a life-or-death situation together might’ve created a bond between us right at that moment, because from then on we rarely left each other’s side.

We started out merely as colleagues, but feelings quickly grew, and how wouldn’t they? He was handsome, intelligent, kind, honorable and great in bed. Everything a woman would want, if she ignored the ‘outlaw’ part, which I wouldn’t and didn’t even want to. Now, eight or nine years later, we still roamed this godforsaken country together - making money by offering protection services to basically anyone who needed bodyguards or an extra pair of shooters defending their property, and also by tracking wanted criminals and delivering their filthy bodies to the law enforcers looking for them; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Sometimes it felt like he kind of preferred it as the latter.

But as he looked back at me and I allowed myself to get lost in his shining eyes and jovial smile, it dawned on me that, at least for now, that was gone. We were on vacation, so to speak. For the last couple of weeks we had been on the road almost non-stop, all so that we could make it to our destination as quickly as possible. 

Today’s leg of the trip had been rather quiet, save for the occasional snorting of one of our horses, but I liked it that way. After so many years with Kyle, I had come to enjoy even those moments of silence: we talked so much every single day, but even when we didn’t say anything I still felt comfort in just being by his side.

Plus, it had been the first time in a while that we managed to just not have to say anything. For the last year or so, we hadn’t been running by ourselves, instead making use of the connection and safety of a small group with other outlaws. Life with them was decent - we didn’t exactly love each other or keep any type of code, but we’d help wherever we could to make sure everyone’s lives were running smoothly. But it was very clear that my true loyalty was only to Kyle, and his to me. 

So, when about nine months in he started to become visibly bothered and complain more, unhappy about having to set up shelter right next to people he didn’t exactly trust, we started planning our exit. We were used to it just being the two of us anyway, so there were no worries, we just had to plan the exit in a way that wouldn’t create a fuss. The opportunity came in the best way possible - a few weeks after our first talk of leaving, Kyle picked up at the post office a letter from his best friend, Stan Marsh, inviting us to go to his farm just one or two states away for a few days' stay. We left camp at night, after everyone was already asleep, and set out on this trip to meet up with the people we were most likely to actually consider family.

Kyle and Stan had known each other since before even being born, one could say. Randy Marsh and Gerald Broflovski were very close friends as children, though they followed very different paths in life: while my partner’s father took to the books and became a lawyer, the Marsh patriarch bought a plot of land not too far from the small mountain town where they lived and built a small but sturdy farm, which expanded over the years and made decent money. It was called Tegridy - apparently, it was supposed to be “Integrity”, a word Mr. Broflovski taught Mr. Marsh, but the latter didn’t really know how to write it; and, by the time he finally learned, it was already too late and the whole region already knew it by the wrong name, so it stuck.

And that’s how Kyle and Stan grew up: kept close as can be from the very start. Mr. Broflovski would take his family to the farmstead whenever he found a little free time and the boys spent their afternoons playing in the open fields, fishing in the stream nearby and helping Mr. Marsh with tasks around the farm once they became old enough. They saw each other turn from dim-witted boys to respectable young men, and the world seemed infinite for them, bright-eyed adolescents who could experience all the great things life had to offer without shouldering any of its burdens.

Unfortunately, just a few weeks before Kyle turned sixteen, his whole family was taken from him in a violent gang attack, caught in an ambush on the wagon they were riding while coming back from a trip, stripped of every valuable they had on hand and then shot dead. My partner wasn’t present at the time of the crime, so he was spared - something that he struggled with the guilt of for many years, and that was his primary motivation for becoming a vigilante: going after criminals just like those who wronged his family, to take them to justice and, more importantly, making sure their sentences were served. 

When Kyle showed up at Stan’s doorstep for what would be his last conversation as a man without blood in his hands, it took a lot of arguing and convincing from Kyle for his friend to not immediately pack his bags, saddle up and ride alongside him. Stan eventually relented, settled for receiving Kyle’s letters and some rare visits, took over the farm and married a lovely young woman named Wendy Testaburger.

A lovely young woman who, turns out, hated Kyle and I’s guts fiercely. She came from a well-off household and left a comfortable life to be with Stan, so I guess having a pair of shabby gunslingers as the closest friends of her new family didn’t sit right with how she was raised. It also didn’t help that, every time we were around, Stan would drop everything he was doing and stick to us like a tick to a dog’s fur, asking Kyle non-stop about everything we were up to and making us fill him in on every single chase and shootout and bounty delivered, without leaving any stone unturned. His interest in the life was very noticeable, even if he tried to deny it during the multiple arguments we heard him have with Wendy when they thought we were sleeping. The new Mrs. Marsh was absolutely terrified that our constant presence would have a bigger impact on him the longer we stayed, and that someday our wicked ways would win Stan over and he’d ride off into the sunset with us and make her a widow - or, worse in her mind, a divorcée.

Her worries only waned after a particularly long stretch of time we spent at their place. Kyle had gotten badly injured in a shootout against one of our bounties - and, although my quick thinking managed to stabilize the situation to where he was no longer in danger, we still needed to lay low for a while as he healed, and sleeping on the dirt in tents moving from place to place was not it. So I found ourselves a wagon and showed up unannounced to the Marsh residence with Kyle and all of our belongings loaded on it. 

My guess is seeing the dangers of the job in real time and how precarious our day-to-day life really was had been a wake-up call to Stan, since after that his begging for me and Kyle to retell our epic stories had diminished considerably. With this, Wendy was finally able to rest assured that she’d keep her husband, and she was willing to get to know us better and have actual positive interactions. At least something good came out of that whole mess - to this day, Kyle’s left shoulder didn’t work as good as it used to, and he still felt this overwhelming pain at random times.

That is all to say the four of us had a very strong bond forged through years of experiences together, delights and torments shared - a bond that would never waiver even when Kyle and I were on the other side of the country cleaning up the trash and delivering bounties around the most different jurisdictions. So, when we received that letter with Stan and Wendy scolding us because we hadn’t seen them since before the lady got pregnant with their fourth and urging us to come back to Colorado for she was now on the last leg of that pregnancy, we figured it was the least we could do to pack our stuff and ride to Tegridy Farm to spend a few weeks with the Marsh family, helping wherever they needed to make sure that these last couple of days, or the few right after childbirth, would go as smoothly as possible.

It had been about two or three weeks that we had been on the road now and we were finally at our destination. To my side, the very familiar farm spanned across the land, its decent area determined by some flimsy wooden fences in need of fixing. The structures and inside the boundaries of the fence for the most part didn’t match its state of neglect; the cultivation fields with the seasonal crops were well-kempt, the stables and barn had a regular repair schedule, and the main house - the crown jewel of the property - stood elegant in the middle of it all, always clean and pristine courtesy of Wendy’s presence. The only other thing that might’ve seemed neglected in the farm was but a shadow behind the main building - the old house where Stan had lived during his childhood, which hadn’t been inhabited since his mother died, but that he also didn’t seem to have the courage or time to take down completely. 

As we crossed the wooden gateways and made our way inside the farm, the first member of the Marsh family to notice our arrival was actually their elderly chubby dog, Sparky. Stan originally bought him as a puppy to train so he would protect the animals and the land from intruders, but he quickly realized that this dog was a huge wimp and just wanted to play all day, promptly fleeing whenever he sensed danger. However, everyone had already taken a liking to the tiny fellow by then, so he became Wendy and Stan’s personal companion, sleeping inside of the main house and growing up alongside the kids as their pet. When he saw the outlines of us on top of our mounts riding towards the building, he started barking happily and ran as fast as his legs could take him, making a turn when he got to our horses and matching their pace alongside Kyle’s.

His barking must’ve alerted the other members of the household, since not long after he started, we noticed Stan getting up off his chair on the porch. “And look who’s finally here!” He announced as he walked towards us with open arms and, not long after, we saw Wendy’s smiling face appear in one of the second-story windows, her hand waving excitedly out of it as we approached in our steeds.

“Oh, come on, we didn’t take that long.” Though he had essentially just been scolded, Kyle had a glowing smile on his face. Just this moment made almost all the tiring parts of travel worth it, to see how glad my partner would get to see his brother after so long and realize that nothing had changed. To have those moments of his youth back, even if for just a short stay.

“Almost a whole year, Kyle!” Stan retorted, slapping the side of his friend’s arm with his raised hand. “Wait a little more and you might as well have come for the kid’s wedding by then.”

Our mounts slowed to a stop as we reached the front porch, and we heard the thundering noise of several footsteps bolting down the stairs inside. Before we could even dismount, the smiling faces of Stan’s two eldest children - a boy and a girl - ran towards our horses, shouting excitedly and asking questions too quickly and with too high-pitched voices for me to even begin answering them.

“Easy now, children.” A much more soft and pleasant voice managed to be picked up by my ears among the ruckus, and my eyes darted towards the door immediately. Wendy Marsh stood by the doorway, her current youngest child - just shy of two years, if I had my math right - hiding behind her legs. My best friend had one of her hands resting on top of her belly, bump visible even under the loose-fitting maternity dress she wore, and I felt the guilt strike at me on sight; It had been too long since we last saw these two, she had gone through all those changes to her body and mind across multiple months, while I was off somewhere shooting people. I felt like an awful friend.

And then she did something that reminded me exactly how she was more than capable of handling this situation by herself. “YOU DARNED LITTLE RASCALS! SHUT UP THIS INSTANT AND LET YOUR AUNT AND UNCLE SPEAK!” This bellowing, infuriated version of Wendy’s voice had the kids fixing their postures and closing their mouths in an instant, not even daring to breathe loudly anymore, and they gave us one last glance before sprinting back quickly inside the house. The toddler followed suit, waddling after its siblings as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.

With the coast now clear, Kyle quickly slid off of his horse, in a swift movement that only comes with years of doing that multiple times a day. I stayed on top of mine, however, and right after dismounting Kyle made his way to the side of my steed, raising his arms towards me. I turned my whole body to his side and let Kyle take hold of my waist, lifting me off the saddle and putting me on the ground with ease. I was more than perfectly capable of getting out on my own, I had as much experience with this as he did - but this was something he fancied doing, he wanted to be a gentleman whenever he could and there weren’t many opportunities in our daily life for him to fill that role, so he loved to have that little moment and I learned to appreciate it. Plus, he’d get fussy if I didn’t let him do it, so I humored him every single time.

“C’mon, Wends, no need for that,” I turned to her as my boots hit the dirt, “Stan’s right, it’s been so long. They’re kids, they’re just happy to see us.”

“Well, but they’re not giving you a hug before I do!” And she didn’t have to wait any longer, wrapping her arms tightly around me as soon as Kyle let go of my waist and moved his body out of the way. I hugged her back carefully, trying not to put any pressure on her belly, something that she didn’t seem a lick concerned about but kind of worried me a little bit. I heard my partner’s boots kicking the pebbles beneath its soles as he power walked towards Stan to give him a hug as well - although in their case it was more of a side hug, slapping the palm of their hands against the other’s backs amidst laughter. The type of salute men usually shared, not as tender as the displays of friendship between us women, but just as heartfelt. 

After a minute or two like this, Wendy let go of me and gave me one last warm smile before going over to Kyle and giving him a quick hug, and I took the opportunity to do the same to Stan. Even if we weren’t as close as him and Kyle, he was still like family to me. We didn’t linger on the greeting, though; My best friend could get quite possessive when other women were near her man, even if it was just me, and I wasn’t gonna make that lady angry if I could avoid it. 

I swiftly took my spot next to Kyle again, and Wendy did the same near Stan.  “You’re looking gorgeous, Wends,” I stated with a smile. “Really glowing!”

“(Y/N)’s right. Baby number four, too! Stan, you must be proud!” Kyle stretched his arm out and placed his hand on Stan’s shoulder, shaking him teasingly. Stan just laughed and shoved his friend’s hand away from him, but when he straightened his stance again, his chest seemed a little more out than usual and his chin a little more high up. With his pride visible like this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a rooster, or a peacock with its feathers all spread out.

“Thank you so much, you two. You’re really sweet,” Wendy wrapped her arms around her husband, hugging him from the side, face as happy as could possibly be - but then those smiles turned into a pout. “But don’t think being sweet is going to redeem you! You’ve barely written to us these months! We’ve been worried sick!” 

“Good thing we’re here now to tell you all about what we didn’t write,” Kyle said as he walked back near our steeds. ”Just let me hitch the horses somewhere out of the sun. I won’t be long.”

“No need.” Before we could take action, Stan quickly put two fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly, catching the attention of a nearby farmhand passing through, who stopped in his tracks and beelined to us. It was a young man, couldn’t be older than eighteen, with tanned skin from the hours under the sun, strong arms and a serious expression. “Oi, Milton. Take these horses here, lead them to the stables with the others and give them some water. Ah, and make sure they’re fed, they’ve been hours on the road.”

Milton gave a quick nod and took our horses by the reins, leading them slowly towards a big building to the left of the house. We followed him with our eyes for a couple of seconds, in silence. “Well, anyway, let’s take this conversation inside as well,” Wendy suggested, gesturing with her arm towards the house, her expression softening. “I’m sure y’all don’t want to wait out in this sun any more than the horses did.”

And she was damn right. We excused ourselves in and went through the doorway, sighing in relief as we found ourselves in the shade at last. “No issues on the travel, I assume?” She asked with a smile as Kyle took his hat off and put it in the hanger next to Stan’s.

“Just a tiny quarrel with the sheriff last town back, nothin’ major.” It had actually been a little bit more than that, but we didn’t want to worry our friends. The sheriff, an extremely unpleasant fellow who spent more of his time harassing the local ‘working girls’ than actually doing his job, seemed to have a real problem when people who actually wanted to stop crime came along. So, when we showed up to the town with a local thief tied up on the back of Kyle’s horse - captured in an extremely convenient encounter nearby - the so-called law enforcer decided we were ‘trying to come for his position’ and threw the tantrum of a lifetime looking for any reason to have us arrested. Luckily no guns were drawn, we left as quickly as we arrived, but the stress of the whole situation still stuck to us for a couple miles after that.

“Fuuuuck, I hate that feller. Please tell me you beat his ass.” Though Stan apparently had tried to make his dislike of the sheriff known only to Kyle, he did so in a rather loud tone, which made us all turn to him. “Short fat motherfucker loves to pull on my dick whenever I’m in town for anything. Pisses Wendy off, too. Damn failed abortion is what he is.”

“Language, Stanley!” Wendy chided, glaring at him. We heard a couple of giggles, quickly suppressed, and I turned my face upwards - on the second floor, leaning on the balustrade near the staircase, the children gathered, looking down at us and listening in on our conversation.

Kyle and I could only bend over ourselves laughing as the heavily pregnant Wendy chased upstairs, going after her much faster children to try and give them a thorough scolding as they yelled out their brand new vocabulary, while Stan made sure to quickly leave the scene so as to make it harder for himself to be next.

Oh to live this life on the daily.

༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚

The rest of the afternoon went by without any issues. Kyle and I managed to take our first proper bath in days, which was extremely appreciated, and then our attention was almost immediately snatched by the Marsh children. My guess was they didn’t get many visitors on the farm, at least not many that were interested in hearing what small kids have to say, so now that they had people to talk to they were sure to teach us all the new things they had learned and play lots of different games with uncle and auntie.

With evening approaching, Wendy prepared some roast beef with mashed potatoes and fried red tomatoes with garlic, along with a whole apple pie for dessert - under the pretext that since guests were over they had the obligation of making more food to be sure we wouldn’t starve, and maybe spend a little more on the process. She knew Kyle and I would be fine with whatever she prepared, her cooking was so good she could probably boil tree bark on her stove and make it the best meal we ever had, so I knew the sizeable dinner was more a satisfaction of her pregnant whims. We all ate until we almost couldn’t fit in our pants anymore, and after the couple put their kids to bed, Stan brought out a nicer wine and we chatted our more mature matters well into the night. 

After a while, Stan and Kyle decided to go out for a smoke and a night walk around the property, leaving me and Wendy to clean up the dinner mess so that we could ‘talk about our feminine issues’, whatever that meant. So we picked up the dirty tableware and took everything to the kitchen, where she had previously set up two buckets - one with warm water and soap, one with clean water - for the dishes.

After we set everything on the counter and she tried taking another step going for the filled buckets, I immediately put my body in front of her, blocking her next steps. “No no no, little mama!”, I declared, putting both my hands on Wendy’s shoulders and pushing her slowly towards the smaller table in the kitchen, which they used for breakfast. “You’ve already done too much today and been on your feet all this time. Now it’s my turn.”

She tried huffing, stomping her foot and going around me, but my grip on her shoulders was strong enough that she couldn’t, so she bitterly relented and took a seat on one of the flimsy brown chairs near the table. “I’m pregnant, not disabled”, I heard her snort behind my back as I finally let go of her and turned towards the pile of dirty dishes.

“I know, I know,” was my reply while I picked up the first dirty plate and dunked it into the soapy water. “But you made this whole dinner for us and it was delicious, Wends. Lemme do this for you, will ya?”

“You helped with the fried tomatoes,” she retorted.

“Sure, but I’m not the one with a whole baby inside me.”

She giggled. “Not yet.”

My hand stopped in the air halfway through grabbing a dirty wine glass. “Come again?” I inquired as I turned to her with raised eyebrows.

“You tell me, (Y/N)! Ever since before I met you you’ve been running from place to place shooting people for money. Don’t you think it’s time you and Kyle settled down, bought a house somewhere? Maybe you two could even get married and finally stop living in sin.”

Her comment had me rolling my eyes, but I still let out a chuckle; the Marshs weren’t all that religious by any means, and Wendy was a particularly outspoken proponent of women’s right to choose how they wanted to live, so I knew she was just taking a jab. “You have no right to use that against me, miss,” I pointed a soapy wet index finger at her, “Not when I know all about what you and Stanley were up to before your daddy let you get hitched.” It was true and she knew it. After we finally became close friends, I was Wendy’s main confidant, and she’d told me all about her relationship to Stan prior to the marriage - tales in great detail about the different places where they met and spent the night together in secret when they were younger. They had lived basically a whole second relationship together away from prying eyes, and the only people who knew about it were within the same mile radius right now.

Hearing this, she smirked and lifted her left hand close to her face, so I could clearly see the back, and I knew then and there that she’d had the last laugh. “And it worked.” With her other hand, she pointed towards her left ring finger, and there was no pretending I hadn’t noticed the shiny golden wedding band she always kept polished to perfection.

Although we had been partnered all those years and were as close as two souls can be, legally Kyle and I weren’t married. We reckoned there was no need, we already spent every single moment together, putting ourselves in danger for each other during the day and sleeping in the same tent at night. Take away the expensive ceremony and we’re husband and wife. Plus, weddings were usually very religious affairs, and not only were we both very distant from that reality, there was also the tiny fact that we were well-known gunslingers (no matter how lawful we thought ourselves to be, killing someone, even a criminal, is still a cardinal sin) and I’m sure your usual religious leaders aren’t willing to officiate for people like that.

And then there was the matter of children. I had always wanted them, it was one of my plans for life, but I had pushed that aside the moment I picked up a gun for the first time. Kyle and I didn’t keep residence on the same spot for too long - we’d lived places, worked for people for a while, but nowhere that we could actually safely stay for years on end. Our normal life was that of setting camp everywhere, to avoid being tracked by any enemies we made along the way, having to move extremely quickly - and sometimes even that wouldn’t be enough and we’d have to face conflict head-on. We could never do that with a child in our arms, it would be a recipe for disaster. Besides, with my age, I just felt too old for them at this point; all the mothers my age had their kids way earlier and it felt weird to start now, like I wouldn’t have anything in common with them. That ship had sailed.

I knew all of that and I was alright with it. My love for Kyle didn’t need no overpriced dress or ring to be real, and we didn’t need kids to have a real family. Hell, so many couples go through that whole song and dance of getting married only to end up cheating and abusing each other beyond belief! If that’s what marriage is, then I don’t want any part of it, thank you very much. We were doing fine. 

So it was the little girl inside of me that felt that little stab of jealousy seeing Wendy’s shiny jewelry and huge belly - the little girl that did grow up flipping through wedding catalogs to see the pretty dresses, that spent her childhood thinking of the names she’d give for her future children and hearing stories about young ladies who met their Prince Charmings and lived their happily ever after, before life took its turns and made her into a killer. This little girl would’ve loved to have a house and kids, and would’ve taken Wendy’s offer in half a heartbeat, but she didn’t have the right to live anymore. 

So as it came, it went. I went back to the dishes, acting like this conversation hadn’t affected me any more than our other casual chats during the day. “Wendy, we can’t,” I said as I splashed a handful of forks inside of the now cold water, “We’re gunslingers, in case you forgot. We don’t have a house like you and Stan do. Ya think a child should grow up living like we do? That ain’t fair.”

I heard the drag of her chair as she got up from it and moved towards me, but before I could turn to tell her to sit down again, she had already closed the distance between us with very quick steps. “You don’t have to live like you do.” She grabbed my right hand between hers and looked me in the eyes in a way that seemed almost like she was pleading. “We told you already. There’s the old house in the back you can take, it just needs some fixing up, Stan would be glad to do it. The kids love having you around, you can help care for them and if you have some we can help too, they can grow up together-”

“Wendy, we’re not gonna live on your farm!”, I interjected before she could go any further in her crazy rambles. Rambles that it wasn’t my first time hearing about - both in letters and in person, she’d sometimes go on about how we should create roots and start a family somewhere nice, while underlining how the farm had all this space and needed more workers and the kids could use a few more friends… “This is y’all’s house. We ain’t gonna impose on your life like that.” I wriggled my hand away from hers. ”And gunslingin’s our job, it’s all we know to do. We wouldn’t know how to live like you do. So just drop it, please.”

She patted her now free hand against her dress to dry it and didn’t seem to want to look at me anymore. “The beauty of being alive is that you can learn.” I heard her say meekly, which made me feel extremely bad that I had been so firm with her when she was so excited about her ideas - but I didn’t want to give her hope, or rather, give myself more hope by listening to her.

I reached to pick up another dirty dish from the pile, but my hand grabbed at nothing. While giving Wendy’s babbles my undivided attention, I had mechanically done all of the washing, now everything just needed to be dried and put away. But, as I stretched my arm out to grab a clean dish towel, it was her time to stop me in my tracks. “I’ll take it from here.” She declared as she reached for the rag before I could and snatched it out of my range. When she heard me gasp and scramble for a rebuttal, she added: “No buts, you must be tired, y’all were on the road all morning and then the kids were also a handful. You’re done for the night.”

“I ain’t going to bed anyway,” I noted, “If you want me to do nothing then I’ll stay here with you ‘till you’re done.”

“Don’t worry about me. It’ll be quick, I’ll dry this all off, and then I’ll go out to call the dog back inside anyway, might as well give the men a shout to come to bed too.” She shrugged as she picked up a wet plate.

I honestly wanted to argue a bit more and not leave her alone like that, but my aching back was very interested in what she suggested - I had spent my whole morning on the back of a horse and then the whole afternoon chasing after zippy children. I sighed in defeat and nodded, earning from her an earnest smile. “Very well then, but tomorrow everything’s on me. Don’t wanna see you up and about before noon, understood? Good night.”

I turned on my heels to leave, hearing her giggle behind me. “Sure thing, (Y/N).” I started walking out of the kitchen, but just then she uttered: “Just… Think about what I said, alright? Good night.”

I looked back over my shoulder to see if she was going to say or do anything else, but her back was already turned to me, as she stared at the window above the counter, watching over her property.

I suppose I ended up doing what she last told me to do in the end, because our little chat really stuck with me through the next minutes.

༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚

Even after all the time I spent getting myself prepped for bed, Kyle still hadn’t returned by the time I was done with it. So I picked up a book from Wendy’s collection - reading was one of her main hobbies, growing up educated as she was, and she kept it up even after moving to the farm - and cozied up under the blanket of the guest room bed. I was happy to have something different to read this time; Kyle and I had a couple books with us, we liked to read whenever we had the free time, but it’s God awful having too many things when you’re always moving from place to place, so we kept our assortment to a minimum. Turns out it’s very easy to get annoyed at a book when it’s the only one you ever read, and those I had in my bag were starting to become a real eyesore.

This one I had in my hand I’d never seen before, but the cover was nice enough and the summary got me on its hook, so I was pretty intrigued. It was this fictional story about an outlaw who got diagnosed with a terminal disease and spent the rest of his life trying to atone for his sinful deeds, while also uncovering some truths about the people he was most close to. Without even realizing, even during the first paragraphs, I had grown attached to the main character - his sorrow as he looks back at what he managed to do with his life, when he remembers all the bad things he has done that brought him to his current situation, and the way he tries to change and make the lives of those he loves as easy as possible with the time he has left. 

It put me into deep thought rather fast. That character managed to change everything about his life, his core beliefs and priorities, when faced with the inevitability of death. He didn’t think he could, in his mind he was doomed to be nothing more than the sins he committed, and to pay for them when the time came for that - but, although he didn’t manage to live the happily ever after everyone wants out of life, he still managed to protect those he loved and leave an everlasting mark on the people around him.

‘The beauty of being alive is that you can learn,’ Wendy’s voice echoed in my mind again, teasing me with promises of a better life. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Kyle to change. We had something most others in our line of work didn’t have the luxury of - we had people willing to help us. But then again, did Kyle and I want to be helped? We had never considered such an option besides drunkenly debating those hypotheticals every once in a blue moon. It was possible that he didn’t even want something like this, and I’d rather bite my tongue out and never speak again than do so and lose him forever over it.

The sudden squeak of the ancient guest room door opening shoved me right out of the depths of my brain into the real world. Kyle was back from his long walk, whistling absentmindedly some random tune he probably picked up at a saloon. The rather acid stench that usually accompanied someone who had just smoked didn’t enter alongside him, and that I was glad for; He had obviously taken the time to air himself out and get all the smell out of his body before coming back in. I wondered if Stan had the same care towards his pregnant wife. “Sorry I took so long, Stan just wanted to show me the new horses and we ended up going for a ride on them.”

“No problem. I found myself something to do anyway.” I closed the book in my lap and lifted it briefly to show him the cover, before setting it on the nightstand, as far as I could from the candle that was also on top of it.

“You’ve gotta tell me what this one is about later.” He sat down on the narrow bench in front of the bed and began taking off his boots. “Did you and Wendy have fun together?”

“Sure thing, it was real nice”, I answered, “Lotsa great talking about our feminine issues and stuff. What about you, macho man?”

My voice carried a hint of sarcasm that he picked up on immediately. He turned his body slightly so he could look at me. “Sorry about that, I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “But you know you and Wendy don’t have the same kind of conversations Stan and I do. That’s what we meant.”

“I know, I know, I’m just playing with ya.” The reassurance that I wasn’t actually mad at him or his friend for the earlier comment made him relax a little. He turned his back to me again and started unbuttoning his shirt as I kept talking. “We really had a nice talk, her and I. It feels so good to be back here.”

“You don’t know how happy I am to hear that. Let’s make the most of the next days then.”

As he got up from the bench to remove his pants, I took the opportunity to take a good look at his body. Kyle had a very lean build, it was quite hard for him to gain weight and build those big muscles some other guys had, but he was by no means weak; doing stuff at camp, handling bandits to bring them to jail and the exercise it all took made him a very fit guy who could stand his ground even without a gun. He was also quite pale, at least for someone who spent almost all his time outside, and had plenty of freckles peppered all around his soft skin. I remembered Milton again, the farmhand Stan hired, and wondered if working on a farm every day under the sun would make Kyle look like that too - I hoped not, I loved my partner the way he was, didn’t want him to change a thing. But I knew it wouldn’t: After many summers together, the only thing I ever saw the sun do to Kyle was make him redder than a tomato all over, and his skin would usually start peeling a day or two later, which was why he preferred to wear long sleeved shirts even in the hotter months.  

There they were, the thoughts of being on the farm again. I blinked and focused my blurry eyes on Kyle again. He had stopped undressing. “Everything alright, honey?”, he inquired, looking at me with a frown.

“Ya, it’s nothin’. Just thinkin’ ‘bout how handsome my man is ‘s all.”, I was quick to answer. He shook his head with a smirk and, without answering, went back to taking off his undergarments.

When he was fully in the nude, he made his way towards the bed, not bothering to put on any sort of sleepwear. In that, he matched me - besides the bedding, there was nothing covering my body. This was normal for us: there was literally no part of our bodies that the other hadn’t seen, so why bother hiding anything? Besides, it made everything so much easier when we didn’t have to spend time ridding ourselves of all that fabric before making love. It had made for some embarrassing situations in the past, where we had to jump straight out of our beds, guns drawn, prepared for trouble; but, no matter how much we told ourselves that we really needed to stop being lazy and start wearing our pajamas, we’d still lay down the next night in our birthday suits, because there was no shame anyone else could make us feel that was more important than the feeling of his warm skin against mine.

“But you wanna know what’s funny?” Kyle commented as he pulled up the covers on the right side of the bed to lay down beside me, “Stan asked me again what I thought of the old house. Said this time we’re not getting away.”

Him bringing this up came as a shock - my eyes widened and I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. Was this man a seer or something? How come he knew to bring up exactly the thing that was eating at my mind the whole night?

I managed to keep my cool and let out a laugh that might’ve sounded a bit too loud for comfort. “Wendy did the same thing to me!”, I yelped, “The way they talk about this with us you’d think they were tryna sell us the farm.”

“They really want us to move in.” He let out a deep exhale as his head hit the feather pillow after a whole day with very little rest. “And he did say Wendy would talk to you and have you hooked on it. That by the end of the year you’d have ‘a bun in the oven’ and I’d finally know the joys of being a father.”

“I’m sure it was just the wine talking. You know Stan’s a major lightweight.” Again with my deflecting. The truth was I didn’t want to give away that Wendy’s suggestions were slowly building a nest in my heart, because I knew it couldn’t stay. Maybe joking around a bit with Kyle would remind me of the situation we were in, that this idyllic little house life we led was only temporary, and that we were bound to go back on the road after a few days, in search of more work. All I couldn’t do was make my current interest too overt, and I would forget about it just fine.

“Eh, I don’t know… He seemed pretty serious to me. Not like he does when he’s drunk, and I’d know that.” He turned on his side, facing me, and I could see the reflection of my candle’s flame dancing inside his olive eyes as he stared intently. Either he was really captivated by it, or he didn’t want to look at me for some reason, and that made me even more worried. He stayed like this for a couple of minutes, during which the room fell to almost complete silence, only broken by the crickets outside or the occasional cackling of the tiny flame. “And… What did you think?” Kyle finally asked, lifting his face toward me, studying my features just in case they gave a different answer than the one that would come from my mouth. “About what Wendy said, I mean.”

“Hey, now, what I thought doesn’t matter.” It was now my turn to look away and stare at the flame, wanting to just blow it out and dunk the room in darkness, all to not continue this conversation. “You know it’s just silly daydreams she has. They don’t get out as often as they used to, with the children and whatnot, so she stays inside and comes up with stuff like this.”

Kyle rapidly sat himself up in the bed and cupped my face in his hands, turning it so that we could finally be looking at each other. “You know your thoughts are the only ones that matter to me.” He stated firmly, gazing into my eyes with even more certainty than that which he had in his voice. “I don’t care about what Stan or Wendy want. But if you have something to say, you have my full attention, no matter what it is.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, bringing my right hand up and resting it on top of his. It was fine. I knew I couldn’t just lie to Kyle here, he’d figure me out. And, with all his brains, surely he could come up with a logical explanation for my troubles and help me see the most sensible path. “Look, I’m sure they mean well and it’s such a pretty idea”, I started, “I’d love to do that if our lives were different. But as it is it wouldn’t stick, honey. There’s no point in pretendin’.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

I expected all sorts of reactions from Kyle, but not this one. His hand withdrew from my face as he pulled his upper body slightly away from me, but still kept his stare fixed. Both his eyebrows were raised and his eyes were wide, and his mouth fell slightly open as he breathed through it. He looked like someone would if they heard something they didn’t want to, or received disappointing news; which wasn’t how he usually reacted to those situations - Kyle was the type to argue his point to the bitter end, so disagreements usually came with a lot more anger instead of sadness or anxiety. This time, he seemed hurt.

“Oh, honey… You know why.” I rested my hands on top of my chest, feeling my heart accelerate, and trying to ground myself before the shock became too much. “We can’t put a child in a world like ours. Would be torture.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be a world like ours. We can live here, at least temporarily, and then we move somewhere else. Stan already gave us the go.”

“Kyle, you know we have targets on our backs!” I tried moving my body closer to his, like that might get the point across easier, my voice denouncing my increasing concern with his reaction. “All these people we sent to swing, their buddies always try to come after us. Stan and Wendy don’t deserve this. We can’t risk them.”

“How? We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere!” There it was, the anger flaring his nerves. It always happened when something hit close to his heart, he felt the need to explain himself and make the people around him ‘see reason’ - I knew that behavior too well, though I wasn’t normally on the receiving end of it. But right now this wasn’t about logic or reason. These were his wishes. “We’ll disappear. I’ll change my name, you’ll change yours, we fake our deaths, these people don’t remember anything anymore after a couple of months anyway!”

Although I kept on nervously laughing, he was hitting all the right points, the points my own heart made when it wanted to feed on the delusions for a while longer. Kyle was very good at that - if he thought something was the better option, he’d twist both Heaven and Hell to make it make sense. “Oh yes? Well, say we go through with it, what do we know about ranch life?” I let out another nervous laugh. “Can you plant anything? Feed cattle?”

“Does that even matter?” In a quick movement, he climbed on top of me, knees at the side of my thighs as he straddled my legs, the blanket draping from his shoulders since he didn’t bother getting out from under it. We didn’t break eye contact for a single second. “You know I learn fast. If I-You want this, then we can figure it out!”

Clarity struck me like a bullet. Did he just say ‘I’? “Stan… Didn’t really talk to you about anything, did he?”

He shook his head again, less enthusiastically this time, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Do you remember a couple months ago, after you and I left the gang, when we talked about life with a house and kids and what we’d do if we had that?” I nodded, before realizing that he couldn’t see the gesture anyway - but he took my silence as agreement and continued talking. “I sent Stan a letter soon after. At first it was just to vent, but then he replied with their suggestion and I thought… Well, we could at least try.” The end of his sentence brought with it a faint smile to his lips, and he opened his eyes again slowly.

For the first time in this conversation had my little fit of laughter been genuine. The three of them had put all this in motion right under my nose, based on one wishful conversation we had, which Kyle had taken to heart and made sure to come to fruition. “I thought you liked the hunt, though” I said, head tilting to the side. “Liked bringin’ people to justice an’ givin’ ‘em what they deserved, no?”

“I like that, but I love you.” He answered without missing a beat. Felt like he was plain waiting for it. “And besides, it’s not like we can’t be virtuous people and do what’s right even without spending all our lives chasing after criminals. Our honor comes from our hearts, not from the barrel of our guns.”

Good ol’ Kyle with his smooth way of talking. It was one of the many reasons I fell for him - though his day-to-day life was rough and he shot outlaws for a living, deep inside he was still a very caring man, someone intelligent who saw all the bad in the world and still chose to do good. “Where did you even learn to talk like that?” I chuckled. “You shoulda been a writer, not a shooter.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’ll get started on that now, since I’ll have more time.” Taking my hands in his, he kissed my knuckles lovingly. Then his thumb grazed my empty left ring finger, his touch, as soft as his rough hands would allow it, lingering for a couple of seconds. “After the wedding, that is.”

“Wait, you serious?” This night was getting so filled with surprises, I might just believe someone if they said Sparky was a human in disguise. “No need for that, my dear. I’m already yours.”

“But I want to do it.” His hands let go of mine and he moved his body closer to me, giving me a quick peck to the forehead. Then he suddenly grabbed the blanket and yanked it to the side, throwing it on the floor and leaving both our bodies completely exposed. “And we gotta do it quick, before you start to show.”

Before I could ask him what I’d start to show, he pulled me by the shoulders and smashed his lips against mine fiercely. My hands shot up to grab his curls, making him groan into my mouth and deepen the kiss - and there it was, the now faint taste of the cigar I hadn’t smelled previously, spicy and earthy, but it tasted like the sweetest thing on the planet just because of the sheer passion we shared right now.  

As I felt Kyle’s hand drift up from between us to knead at my breast, I broke the kiss with a gasp. “Wait, here?” I asked, surprised, though the corners of my mouth curved up, snitches of my excitement.

“Now.”, he declared, straightening his legs and propping himself up in his arms to give me space to slide down and lay beneath him, with my head now on the pillow and my legs spread. When I broke eye contact for just a second and finally looked down, I saw his dick was already almost fully hard - was the simple idea of getting me pregnant enough to make him like that?

“Can’t wait to see how you’re gonna explain this to them tomorrow” I said with a giggle as Kyle lowered his body, putting his weight on his elbows, and planting kisses all over my face. My subdued laughs quickly got replaced by soft hums as he started going down the side of my neck with his lips, while his hips started rocking against mine, his cock grinding against my body and the tip spreading some warm precum over my lower abdomen with each slow movement.

His answer, unlike most everything he ever said, was simple, direct, and left no leeway for questioning. “Well, it would do them some good to get used to it.” I felt my face burn like the damn candle as he said that, and my pussy starting to drip with wetness, the arousal soaking into the bedsheet. He stopped his kisses for a moment to put his mouth to my ear, and when he whispered his next declaration, it felt like it was going straight to my cunt: “Because I’m keeping you filled up now. Make you mine all the time and no one can do a damn thing about it.”

“Oh, you gonna change your mind when I’m all big and swollen…”, I drawled feebly. Disputing his claims was getting hard now since my brain was getting foggy with desire, but I still had to try, even if just to hear him singing praises to me some more.

I felt his left hand coursing through my body, stopping with his palm flat on my midriff, feeling almost cold with how hot I was getting all over. “Absolutely not,” He whispered again, “You’re gonna be even more fucking gorgeous when you’re carrying my child. I’ll make love to you every single night.”

My hand started to move down between our bodies, too, as I tried to reach for Kyle’s throbbing cock, wanting to make him feel good - if I couldn’t with pretty words like he did me, at least I knew I could do it with actions. But, when my fingers touched his leaking tip, he immediately took his hand off my belly and gripped my wrist, moving it back to the side of my body. As I looked at him with a puzzled expression on my face, he simply shook his head, gave me another peck to the mouth and started pushing himself down on the bed, only stopping when his face was level with my pussy and his palms were flat at the side of my hips.

Just by seeing him there, I could feel my walls clenching around nothing, almost like they begged on their own for his loving and experienced touch. Kyle was a damn great lover and from the very first day we laid together it was like he knew all the right ways to make me come undone, and he had no shame about anything he did to achieve it - most of all, he was eager to do it. By God did this man love to please me. If that was what was waiting for me every night from now on, I could very easily get used to everything else.

He started planting small kisses on the inside of both of my thighs as he pushed my legs slowly up, my knees now almost hitting my chest. His lips felt soft and endearing on my skin, but this was not where I wanted them - and he knew it, with the way he held my gaze the whole time as he did it, his eyes glittering with his teasing ways. Every few kisses, he’d break the sequence with a slight graze of his teeth on my skin, the softest of bites, but enough to make all the fine hairs in my thigh rise up in a pleasurable goosebump.

Just as I was getting tired of the wait and was contemplating pulling at his hair to bring him away from my leg, it was like he had read my mind again. He let go of my thighs and put his hands on my hips, not quite gripping them, but steadying them in place. I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly as he licked a stripe from my already very wet cunt to my clit, giving it a very quick kiss at the end, which made me wonder for a second if he was about to start teasing me again and how long for. But then all thoughts left my brain as soon as he started swirling his tongue over my clit, in a pattern I didn’t know or care about, making me squirm almost immediately and dig my nails into my palm.

His tongue slithered down, making its way to my entrance, and my hips started rolling against his mouth, trying to help his movements as he fucked me with it. He’d grunt every now and then as he did it, lost in the satisfaction he felt by pleasuring me, and sending the vibrations through my heat, making me even wetter. I could feel him staring at me from down there, too, despite my shut eyes; He always paid attention to every reaction of mine, licking and sucking all the right parts that he knew made me squirm.

Then he moved up with his mouth to focus on my clit again and my hands darted down to grab at his hair, my palms hurting at the spots where the little crescent shapes from my nails had formed. I felt one of his fingers circling my entrance, gathering my arousal before plunging fully deep inside, my walls almost sucking it in. Another one soon followed and he started pumping them in and out while curling them upwards, massaging my sweet spot perfectly, still never missing the pace of the swirls of his tongue on my hardened bud.

It became too much too quickly. The dam holding back the river of my climax broke after not much longer and my orgasm washed over me violently, every single muscle in my body tensing up and my thighs pressing strongly against the side of my lover’s head while my hips rocked against his mouth, chasing my pleasure to its bitter end. One of my hands darted up to cover my mouth immediately, muffling the loud cries I let out as it happened, my one and only moment of clarity during the whole release.

And even then Kyle didn’t stop his ministrations, his hand covered with my juices as his fingers kept pushing inside, making way through my tightly clenched walls. After I came down from my haze, however, the overstimulation started to become rather painful - only when I managed to collect enough strength to tug at the back of his hair rather fiercely to pull him away from my cunt did he stop, and even then I swore I could see for a brief moment a hint of disappointment in his eyes.

Kyle positioned his body between my legs again and took his time to run one last stripe along my slit with his fingers, the ones he used inside me, before bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean, with his eyes closed. He did this every time, not wanting to waste even a single drop of me. I was his favorite whiskey and, when it came to that, he was a damn alcoholic.

This time it was me putting my hands on Kyle’s shoulders and bringing him down for a kiss, running the tip of my tongue across his lips lightly, tasting my love in him. When we parted, gasping for air, I leisurely ran my hands over his upper body, caressing every inch of him they could reach - his cheeks, then down his neck, around his collarbone, his chest, until my left hand stopped at his shoulder, on top of his biggest and most visible scar.

Kyle had plenty of scars, these things came with our line of work, but this one was different. Not caused by a bullet or a knife, but rather by fire itself - a dynamite explosion that caught us by surprise during a shootout in this very state we were currently in. That fire almost took my lover’s life, dragged both of us into months of suffering and stress, and even years after it was extinguished we still carried with us not only the trauma, but a physical reminder of everything it claimed. 

The physical scar itself was a bit rough to the touch and full of small streaks and bumps all over. It spread all over his shoulder into the right side of his chest, his upper arm, and a bit over his back. Across the years, its color had faded from a gruesome brown to a slight reddish tint, but it still had a jarring contrast to Kyle’s pale skin. No part of it was delightful, if I’m being honest. Yet I’d kiss it every single night, caress it at every opportunity and massage it with expensive essential oils whenever those were available; because I’d take a whole life with that scar over even a single second of the alternative.

“You saved me, you know,” He murmured with a sigh.

“I know, because you say it all the time.” I chuckled. “But we ain’t gotta talk about that anymore, dear. You know I’d do it again.”

“Not that day. Well, yes that day, but also all the others before and after that.” He lowered his head closer to mine so that our noses and foreheads were touching, and his warm breath ghosted my lips, bringing the lustful haze back to my brain. At this point I didn’t know what I wanted to do more: Hear his voice forever as he whispered his praise and love towards me, or kiss him until I could feel all these words inside of my skin.

My partner took himself in his hands and started to slide the tip of his cock up and down between my folds, from my entrance to my clit, making my whole body twitch a little when he got to the still very sensitive bundle of nerves. “And you might just be about to save me again,” He continued, aligning himself with my entrance, “You’ll be the perfect wife and mother. My wife and the mother of my babies.”

Kyle pushed himself inside of me slowly, inch by inch, being extra careful as his big and thick cock stretched out my cunt. It didn’t hurt much, I was used to it after years of taking him regularly, but he still wanted to make sure I was comfortable every single time before continuing. 

Once I gave him a smile and a small nod, he started to push in and out slowly, letting me feel every single twitch of his cock inside me and every one of those veins I knew so well pressed against my walls in their entirety. He quickly built up momentum, however, and soon the room was filled with the squelching sounds of my wetness being pounded against, his hips striking my body and the bedframe hitting the house’s wooden walls perfectly synchronizing with it. After a while like this, without warning, he picked up both my legs and brought them over each of his shoulders, pushing my knees back against my chest, my toes touching his hair as they curled in pleasure.

Kyle was hitting my cervix with every strong thrust now, sending sharp and slightly painful stings that jolted through my lower abdomen with every smash of his soft head against that barrier. And yet, every time I felt those, I just wanted more and more; Having Kyle deep inside me in this position always managed to cover all the right spots inside of me, I just wanted to hold him, keep him there. And I knew he was feeling just as good as I was - the sounds coming from his throat were getting louder and louder as he shut his lips tighter to prevent them from turning into full brown growls, his fingertips whiter than ever since his grip on my hips was so fierce I was sure by tomorrow I’d have a few bruises there.

“K-Kyle… Aaaaah… Give… Me…” I whimpered between moans, stretching my arms towards him, nails scratching against his skin as I tried to grab his hips, keep them glued to mine forever.

“Lord… You want me even more, do you?” He responded with shaky breaths, and I immediately felt it when he picked up even more speed - a move made even easier by the amount of slick built up in and around my pussy -, jackhammering into my cunt and making me see stars both from pain and pleasure. 

At this point I should’ve known there was no point in even trying to hide our sinful sounds anymore, but I still felt like I needed to do it. I tried to pick up Kyle’s pillow from the side of my head and put it over my face to muffle my constant cries of satisfaction, but my partner immediately grabbed it from my hand and tossed it back in its place with a growl.

“No. Don’t hide it. I want to see it. The face you make… When you cum for me and I stuff you up to the brim.”

The scene he described burned into my brain almost immediately and I could think of nothing else. For him to fill me up, give me a baby, make us a family - it was all I wanted out of life now, and the mere thought of it was enough to have my muscles tensing and that familiar pressure on my lower abdomen to start building up again, threatening to snap. “Please, Kyle,” I whined, “Breed me. Give it all to me… I need it…”

“I know you do, darling...” He leaned closer to me to give me a kiss, the clash of our lips messy and awkward with our desperate need to touch each other and the fogginess in our brains, but we didn’t care. I just wanted to have him as close as possible. “I need it too… Cum for me, please. I want to feel you milking my dick to the last drop.”

He needed not ask further. For the second time that night I felt my whole body burst into electricity, my cunt spasming like crazy as I tried to give Kyle exactly what he asked of me, exactly what I felt like I was meant to do all along. My legs trashed all over near his shoulders and my back arched as I lost control of my body with the waves of pleasure that washed me over.

The tightness around his cock as my walls fluttered around him and my face contorting in absolute pleasure as I came were what finally did him in. Kyle threw his head back while he came undone inside me, grabbing my hips and pulling them towards him as he buried himself deep into my core, his manhood throbbing, painting my walls with his seed. The sensation was extremely new to me - I felt the warm spurts painting my walls, filling me up and leaving Kyle’s mark somewhere no other man could ever reach.

I wasn’t used to Kyle finishing inside of me. Considering the everlasting battle between our higher than average libidos and our fear of having children, the closest compromise for that was having him do it on my breasts, belly, mouth, face, even ass if he was feeling wild enough. On the rare occasions where he did cum inside, I couldn’t even enjoy it - my brain would immediately be flooded with stress and worry, shutting down any other sensation, and I’d spend the next month or so losing sleep waiting for my next period so I could finally be at peace again.

But here there was none of that. I could relax and ride out this high with him. I let him have his moment, heaving my exhaustion away quietly as I admired the red flush on his pale skin and the sheen of his sweat under the candlelight, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he panted like his lungs weren’t big enough for the amount of air he needed to live. When he finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was me, I felt wrapped up in his love all over again.

When his breathing started to steady, I figured he’d get himself off of me and take his place by my side on the bed. Instead, he just laid his whole body on top of mine, somehow being careful enough to not crush me under his weight as he collapsed.

“Kyle?” I gave him some quick taps to the shoulder with my fingers after a minute or two like this in silence, when I’d started to worry that he might just fall asleep. “C’mon, dear, you gotta scoot over if you wanna sleep.”

“Hmph… Sorry…” He groaned, with a sluggishness that made clear he was indeed just a few sheeps counted away from deep slumber. “Wanted to make sure to keep it all in. Don’t wanna waste…”

Even though he clearly didn’t want to, he slowly moved away from me and rolled to his side of the bed. When his dick withdrew from me, I suddenly felt a bit empty and wondered briefly if I couldn’t have tried to sleep like that or at least stay a little longer.

“Sorry, my dear,” I planted a kiss to the side of his head, “But you know, if you don’t get me pregnant tonight, we have plenty of time now.”

I sat back on the bed briefly to blow the candle out on the nightstand, plunging our room into almost complete darkness. As soon as I laid my head back on my pillow, Kyle brought his arm over my body and pulled me closer to him, nuzzling my hair.

“We have plenty of time now,” He whispered, with more energy in his voice this time.

And we definitely did.

Dividers by @cafekitsune

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth Mandel

Yesterday was the anniversary of only one thing: the mass murder and rape of Jews. The demonstrations, therefore, fell into two categories: for and against. In the “for” category was one led by a familiar face: Nerdeen Kiswani, who took a break from trying to set Jews on fire to celebrate others who set Jews on fire. “Oct. 7 was a prison break and all the atrocity propaganda that we saw that came out of it was lies,” Kiswani sermonized, an imitation Father Coughlin for the Tik Tok generation.

The one confusing part of Kiswani’s rant was that she suggested the 1,200 innocent civilians “maybe” murdered on that day were killed by Israeli helicopters, which in Kiswani’s mind should make the IDF the good guys.

But Kiswani is bound to become coherent eventually, because she’ll have lots of practice. It’s clear she sees this as her calling, and the New York Times agrees. “Ms. Kiswani bills herself as part of a bolder, new generation of Palestinian American activists who are calling for what she says earlier generations also wanted, but feared to say in public: the replacement of the state of Israel with a state called Palestine, covering all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” the paper wrote in a flattering profile of the fair Lady Genocide.

The Times is just trying to be evenhanded. While on the one hand, it writes, Kiswani calls for the destruction of Mideast Jewry from the river to the sea, on the other, “Ms. Kiswani insists she is not antisemitic.” Well, OK, if she insists, I guess we have to take her at her word, the way the world took Hitler at his word he wouldn’t invade his neighbors.

Kiswani may have started Her Struggle on campus years ago, but her very professionalized caravan of mouth-frothing human Halloween displays left that all behind a long time ago. She’s an example of what coddled campus radicals turn into.

The Nazi Youth eventually grew up, too. So what happens when this generation of lost campus Jew-baiters grows up?

Even more than that, what will it take for them to hold the public’s attention? After all, we get acclimated to circumstances pretty quickly. Tent encampments designed to bar Jews from public spaces seemed pretty shocking a year ago. But Ivy League administrators ensured that it became normalized. It’s been nearly a year since Paul Kessler, a Jewish Californian, was killed by a pro-Palestinian protester not far from Los Angeles on a street corner. People seem to have gotten over that.

The tent isn’t the point of the tentifada. The point is the violence, the normalization of second-class citizenship for Jews, the loyalty oaths, the street mobs outside Jewish-owned restaurants smashing windows. It’s the evil energy that can’t be re-corked. How will American institutions inoculate themselves against what has been released into the air? Unless you’re focused on that, you’re still fighting the last war.

[angrybell]

An Israeli author was supposed to appear and give a talk about her books at the Pushkin House, part of the University of London. It was due to occur on . With the date approaching the people at Pushkin House sent the following to Ms. Rubina.

Good afternoon, Dina

The Pushkin House advertised our upcoming discussion on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They would like to understand your position on this issue before reacting in any way.

Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?”

Natalia! “

Ms. Rubina responded with the following open letter.

An OPEN LETTER

from Dina Rubina

“Dear Natalia!

You have written beautifully about my novels; I am very sorry for the time you have wasted. But it seems we’ll have to cancel our meeting. The University of Warsaw and the University of Torun have just cancelled lectures by the remarkable Israeli Russian-speaking writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Jews in Galicia in the 17th and 19th centuries – “to avoid aggravating the situation”. I suspected that this would also happen to me, because now the academic environment is the main nursery of the most disgusting and rabid anti-Semitism, hiding behind the so-called “criticism of Israel”. I was expecting something like this, and even sat down three times to write you a letter on the subject… but I decided to wait, and so I have waited.

That’s what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious account of my position on my beloved country, which now (and always) lives in a circle of ardent enemies who seek its destruction; on my country, which is now waging a just patriotic war against a violent, ruthless, deceitful and sophisticated enemy:

The last time in my life I apologised in the headmaster’s office, in the ninth grade. Since then, I have done what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing only my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

And so on.

I’m really sorry, Natalia, for your efforts and the hope that you could “cook something with me” – something that everyone will like.

Therefore, I ask you personally to send my reply to all those who are interested:

On Saturday 7 October, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, carefully prepared and perfectly equipped with Iranian weapons Hamas terrorist regime ruling the Gaza enclave (which Israel left some 20 years ago) attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim and simultaneously pelted the territory of my country with tens of thousands of rockets. Atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities and horrors that make the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah pale in comparison (captured, by the way, by the frontal and chest cameras of the murderers themselves and boastfully sent by them in real time to the Internet), can shock any normal person. For several hours, thousands of gleeful, blood-drunk animals raped women, children and men, shot their victims in the crotch and in the head, cut off women’s breasts and played football with them, cut babies out of the bellies of pregnant women and immediately beheaded them, tied up small children and burned them. There were so many charred and completely burnt bodies that for many weeks the pathologists could not cope with the enormous burden of identifying individuals.

My friend, who worked in a New York hospital waiting room for 20 years and then spent another 15 years in Israel identifying remains, was one of the first to arrive in the burned and blood-soaked kibbutzim with a group of rescuers and medics… She still can’t sleep. A medic used to cutting up bodies – she fainted from what she saw and then vomited all the way back to the car. What these people have seen is beyond words.

Together with the Hamas fighters, the “civilian population” rushed into the holes in the fence, joined the pogroms on an unprecedented scale, robbed, killed and dragged whatever they could get their hands on into Gaza. Among these “peaceful Palestinians” were 450 members of the UN’s UNRWA scum. Everyone was there, and judging by the stormy total joy of the population (also captured in these inconvenient times by hundreds of mobile cameras) – there were a lot of people – Hamas supports and approves, at least before the real fighting starts, of almost the entire population of Gaza… The main problem: our residents were dragged into the beast’s lair, more than two hundred of them, including women, children, the elderly and non-essential foreign workers. About a hundred of them are now rotting and dying in the Hamas dungeons. Needless to say, these harassed victims are of little concern to the “academic community”.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I am not writing this to make anyone sympathise with the tragedy of my people.

For all these years, when the world community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) – and the annual budget of the UNRWA organisation alone is a BILLION dollars! – All these years, Hamas has used this money to build an empire of the most complex underground tunnel system, to stockpile weapons, to teach primary school children how to dismantle and reassemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle, to print textbooks in which the hatred of Israel defies description, in which even the maths problems go like this: “There were ten Jews, Shahid killed four, how many are left?” – with every word calling for the murder of Jews.

And now that Israel, shocked at last by the monstrous crime of these bastards, is waging a war to destroy the Hamas terrorists, who have prepared this war so carefully, planting thousands of shells in all the hospitals, schools, kindergartens… – here the academic world of the whole world has risen up, worried about the “genocide of the Palestinian people”, based, of course, on data provided by… who? That’s right, by the same Hamas, by the same UNRWA… The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, the massacre in Somalia, the mockery of the Uighurs or the millions of Kurds persecuted for decades by the Turkish regime – this very concerned public, wearing “Arafat” around their necks, the trademark of the murderers, rallies under the banners “Free Palestine from the river to the sea! – which means the total destruction of Israel (yes, many of these “academics”, as surveys show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where some borders are…). – Now this very public asks me to “take a clear position on this issue”.

Are you serious?! Are you serious?!!

You see, I’m a writer by profession. All my life, for more than fifty years, I have been folding words. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto… and many others.

Now, with great pleasure, without using too many expressions, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send all the brainless “intellectuals” interested in my position to the ASS. In fact, very soon you will all be there without me”.

Dina Rubina

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Spiked

Published: Sept 16, 2024

The new UK Labour government has declared war on free speech. Within weeks of gaining power, it scrapped a law upholding free speech in universities. In early August, following rioting across England, it announced plans to tighten the regulations on online speech. Perhaps most troubling of all, Keir Starmer is also considering writing a broad definition of ‘Islamophobia’ into law, which would make it almost impossible to criticise Islam and even Islamic extremism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – writer, activist and author of Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women’s Rights – returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show last week to discuss the importance of free speech in the battle against Islamist extremism. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. You can listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Why do you think politicians – even those who would define themselves as ‘liberal’ – are so willing to adopt a phrase like Islamophobia?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I think it has to do with guilt about the past. When it comes to the Jews, many European countries did not protect them from Nazi persecution, so there’s definitely a sense that we don’t want to do the same to our Muslim minorities. When I was living in the Netherlands, this was a very potent argument. The Dutch felt extremely guilty about the fact that, in proportion to the Dutch population, more Jews were removed from their homes and sent to concentration camps, than in any other country in Europe. So there’s definitely a sense of ‘let’s not repeat history’. But this is also what makes me so angry, because the Islamists – and to a certain extent, the leftists – will exploit this. They will exploit what is essentially the goodness of human beings, a desire to ‘do right this time round’, in order to do wrong.

While the Islamists want to use democracy as a tool to win power and then abolish democracy, I think the woke left also wants to do something similar. I think this is part of why the far left does rely on the Islamists to vote for them. This is then compounded by the fact that the white working class, which was traditionally the group of people the Labour Party relied on, has faded. So instead, these parties rely increasingly on migrants. This is their new demography. They think they can harness their vote to come to power. People talk about the ‘great replacement’, but it’s actually a ‘great realignment’. The parties which used to represent the working classes now no longer do so. Instead, they now just represent capital.

O’Neill: So what do you make of this idea of the ‘Muslim vote’ in the UK, particularly in relation to the new Labour government?

Ali: I see Keir Starmer as a front for the radical left. He needs the Muslim vote, and the Muslim vote can be relatively easily gained because Islamists can skillfully organise their communities to vote. But the question that Keir Starmer, and other leftist parties across Europe, should ask themselves is this: ‘What are they demanding in return?’ Because the Islamists do have many demands in return. First and foremost, they want censorship. They want ‘Islamophobia’ to be made illegal. And the way they define Islamophobia is any form of criticism of the political agenda of Islam.

If you talk about the radical views being preached in the mosques or the schools, that’s Islamophobia. If you question the fact that some imams are telling their congregations not to assimilate and to distance themselves from ‘the infidels’, that’s Islamophobia. If you talk about the recent examples of sexual abuse against women and girls, some perpetrated by Muslim immigrants, that’s Islamophobia. If you highlight that there is a kind of soft Sharia law in Britain – which is well established in many Muslim communities when it comes to marriages, divorces and inheritances – that’s Islamophobia. The same goes if you want to talk about the fact that there are Muslim women in Muslim households being beaten, curfewed, removed from school, forced to marry and then raped. If you want to expose any of this, you’re committing Islamophobia. And so, all of a sudden, you can’t fight sexual violence against women perpetrated by men.

That is what banning Islamophobia is going to ban, if you allow it. It will ban discussing these issues in the name of human rights and equality. If you question this and ask, ‘Do we really want this parallel society?’, you’ll be called Islamophobic.

These days, the Islamists are less and less secretive about their agenda. This can be seen recently in the blatant anti-Semitism in some Muslim communities. But if you bring this stuff up, and try to get politicians to discuss it, you’re again accused of Islamophobia. This is the question that we have to ask governments, particularly the leftist governments that are trying to outlaw Islamophobia. It is criticism of Islam that’s going to be banned. Journalists and newspapers will no longer be able to exercise their free-press rights to investigate crimes that are being committed.

O’Neill: The unwillingness of the woke left, even the moderate left, to ever criticise radical Islam is extraordinary. We really are in a difficult situation, aren’t we?

Ali: Absolutely. We’re emboldening them. The woke left is the enemy of civilisation, and they say so themselves. They’re deconstructing everything. On the other hand, the Islamists are also clearly an enemy of civilisation – our Western civilisation in particular. We’ve got to stand up to these two forces now. The silent majority has to stand up and stop this before they stop us. And the only way to do that is through freedom of speech, which is exactly what they want to take away from us.

As voters, we still have the capacity to organise, vote, find new leaders and reject what is being imposed on us. In the decay of the universities, alongside the censorship in schools, there’s definitely a concerted effort to silence us. Most worryingly of all, I think, is what we’ve seen after the riots and how the government has responded. Whereas previously you might be cancelled or piled-on online, now the elites are using the law. British prisons, which are effectively full, are clearing out convicted criminals, some of whom have done all sorts of horrible things, to put people in prison for putting words and images online. They’re using the awesome powers of the state to censor and to silence us. Soon we could be banned from saying things that are, in this very sinister phrase, ‘legal but harmful’. This should be met with the greatest opposition of all time. All of us need to go out into the streets and say, ‘stop right there’.

--

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here:

==

A modern Islamic insurgence is no longer conducted with swords on horseback, but with the aggressors using the language of victimhood.

[matan4il]

Update post:

In Hezbollah's rocket attack on Israel's north today, one person was killed and at least 9 are injured. All are from Thailand. I got to guide groups of students from Thailand, who come to study agriculture in Israel, and as part of their degree, they also work in the fields. They were so lovely, and they absolutely don't deserve this, for having tried to better their lives and the lives of those around them. Which is making me think of this vid from Oct 7 that I just can't forget of a Thai man, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists, footage I will never forget for as long as I live. You could argue that Hezbollah's rockets didn't mean to target Thai nationals, but the terrorists on Oct 7 KNEW that they were torturing (they took their time sadistically toying around with the man in the vid) and murdering non-Israelis. They KNEW they were kidnapping non-Israelis. And they still did it. Remind me, which part of Palestine is Thailand supposedly occupying?

On Thursday, in an independent shooting terrorist attack in Eli, two Israelis were murdered. They have been identified as 16 years old Uriah Hartom, and 57 years old father of three Yitzchak Zeiger. The Palestinian terrorist was identified as a Palestinian police officer, affiliated with Fatah (the party which currently rules the Palestinian Authority), not Hamas. He had previously been imprisoned by Israel twice, for dealing in illegal arms. The owner of a hummus diner, located near the gas station where the terrorist attack took place, was by chance on a break from his reserves service in Gaza. He heard the shots, came out, fired loosely at the terrorist to attract him away from civilians, went back inside, took a better shooting position, and finished the terrorist off.

A 57 years old man from the Israeli city of Ashkelon was stabbed during an independet terrorist attack in the area of Hebron on Saturday. The terrorist has been arrested.

Globally, we continue to see a rise in antisemitic incidents, including violent ones. Over the course of the past few days alone, we got an attack in Switzerland (in Zurich, where a Jewish man was stabbed on Saturday eve. The 15 years old terrorist was arrested by Swiss police. Please remember this for the next time you see Israel being vilified for arresting teenage terrorists), an attack on a Jewish man exiting a synagogue in Paris, France on Friday eve (Israeli TV reports that the terrorist called the victim, "a dirty Jew") and a Muslim former patient who shot his Jewish dentist to death, not too far from San Diego in the US (yeah, sorry. I don't buy that the moment a supposedly disgruntled ex patient decides to kill his Jewish doctor just so happens to be a moment when anti-Jewish violence is being justified, normalized and rising everywhere. A part of how antisrmitism, homophobia, racism and other forms of generalized hatred work, is that even when grudges are personal, these forms of hate give the hater socially acceptable terms and tools to openly hurt the person they hate, more than they would have dared to if they had a grudge against someone who wasn't a member of a marginalized group. Apparenntly, I'm not the only one who thinks the antisemitic angle mustn't be left out).

Meanwhile, Israel has arrested the members of a terrorist squad in Hebron, which was inspired by ISIS. They had already managed to produce 100 explosive devices, and we can only imagine how many lives have been saved thanks to these arrests.

This is 33 years old Dennis Yakimov.

He was killed the other day during the fighting in Gaza. Every day, Israeli soldiers are dying there, and Israelis watch the news, and hear their family members mourn them, and cry over the loss. IDK if any words I write here can express the grief, so today I'm just going to share this short vid of Dennis' only daughter, Danelina, speaking at his funeral:

IDK how people can actually think that after the loss, pain and horror of Oct 7, Israelis are putting themselves through this added loss, pain and horror just to see more Palestinians killed. And that's what they mean, every time they ask, "How many Palestinians have to die..." as if the goal was ever dead Palestinians, rather than Hamas being destroyed and Israelis knowing that Hamas could never perpetrate another massacre as it did, also aiming to deter other terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah from trying such a massacre, knowing that if they did, Israel wouldn't relent before they're destroyed, too. I think this kind of question can only be asked by people, for whom we're not really human beings, and the devastating pain that we feel over our fallen and their loved ones, who will never be the same, really doesn't register.

May Dennis' memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Matti Friedman

The little book may have been kept by a Jewish family in Bamiyan, the curator suggested, with different people adding new texts as the years passed. The hands of at least five scribes are evident in the pages. They were influenced by ideas and writing coming from both major Jewish centers of the time—Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq, and the Land of Israel, where Jewish sovereignty had been lost seven centuries before and whose people were now under Islamic rule.

The previously unknown poem shows the influence of a familiar biblical text, the erotic Song of Songs, according to Professor Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University, the member of the research team in charge of the poem’s analysis.  But it also shows the impact of an esoteric Jewish book that wasn’t part of the Bible, known as the Apocalypse of Zerubbabel. This book is thought to have originated in the early 600s, when a brutal war between Byzantium and the Sasanian empire of Persia generated desperate messianic hopes among many Jews. Whoever wrote the poem in the Afghan prayer book had clearly read the Apocalypse, Elizur said—giving us a glimpse of a Jewish spiritual world both familiar and foreign to the coreligionists of the Bamiyan Jews in our own times, 1,300 years later. The previously unknown poem shows the influence of a familiar biblical text, the erotic Song of Songs, according to Professor Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University. (Museum of the Bible)

Chapters of the book’s journey from Afghanistan to Washington are unclear—some because they’re simply unknown even to the experts, and others because that’s the way the people in the murky manuscript market often prefer it.  

When the book was discovered by the Hazara militiaman, according to Hepler, the tribesmen didn’t know exactly what it was but understood it was Jewish and assumed it was sacred. The local leader had it wrapped in cloth and preserved in a special box. At one point in the late 1990s, it seems to have been offered unsuccessfully for sale in Dallas, Texas, though it’s unclear if the book itself actually left Afghanistan at the time. 

After the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the book disappeared for about a decade. In 2012 it resurfaced in London, where it was photographed by the collector and dealer Lenny Wolfe. 

Any story about Afghan manuscripts ends up leading to Wolfe, an Israeli born in Glasgow, Scotland. I went to see him at his office in Jerusalem, an Ottoman-era basement where the tables and couches are cluttered with ancient Greek flasks and Hebrew coins minted in the Jewish revolt against Rome in the 130s CE. It was Wolfe who helped facilitate the sale of the larger Afghan collection to Israel’s National Library. “The Afghan documents are fascinating,” he told me, “because they give us a window into Jewish life on the very edge of the Jewish world, on the border with China.” 

When Wolfe encountered the little prayer book, he told me it had already been on the London market for several years without finding a buyer. In 2012, the year he photographed the book, he said it was offered to him at a price of $120,000 by two sellers, one Arab and the other Persian. But the Israeli institution he hoped would buy the book turned it down, he told me, so the sale never happened. Not long afterwards, according to his account, he heard that buyers representing the Green family had paid $2.5 million. When I asked what explained the difference in price, he answered, “greed,” and wouldn’t say more. (Hepler of the Museum of the Bible wouldn’t divulge the purchase price or the estimated value of the manuscript, but said Wolfe’s figure was “wrong.”)

The collection amassed by the Green family eventually became the Museum of the Bible, which opened in Washington in 2017. The museum has been sensitive to criticism related to the provenance of its artifacts since a scandal erupted involving thousands of antiquities that turned out to have been looted or improperly acquired in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The museum’s founder, Steve Green, has said he first began collecting as an enthusiast, not an expert, and was taken in by some of the dubious characters who populate the antiquities market. “I trusted the wrong people to guide me, and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers in those early years,” he said after a federal investigation. In March 2020 the museum agreed to repatriate 11,000 artifacts to Iraq and Egypt.